THE  BEACON  BIOGRAPHIES 

EDITED   BY 

M.  A.  DiWOLFE  HOWE 


EDGAR  ALLAN   POE 


BY 


JOHN   MACY 


-  THE 


EDGAR    ALLAN    POE 


BY 


JOHN   MACY 


BOSTON 

SMALL,  MAYNARD  &  COMPANY 
MCMV1I 


Copyright, 
By  Small,  Maynard  &  Company 

(Incorporated} 


Entered  at  Stationers'  Hall 


Published  October, 


Press  of 

Geo.  H.  Ellis  Co., 
Boston,  U.S.J. 


The  photogravure  used  as  a  frontispiece 
to  this  volume  is  from  a  photograph  of  a 
daguerreotype  taken  in  Lowell,  Massachu- 
setts,  in  November,  1848.  The  photograph 
is  lent  by  Mr.  Walter  Leon  Sawyer.  The 
present  engraving  is  by  John  Andrew  &  Son, 
Boston. 


464612 


TO 
V.  R.  E.  OF  VIRGINIA 


PEEFACE 

"Whoever  writes  of  Poe  or  Whitman  finds 
himself  in  controversies  irrelevant  to  pure 
letters.  Whitman  has  become  prophet  of 
an  Idea,  and  the  fierce  light  that  beats  about 
him  is  not  clear  to  see  by.  Poe,  on  the  con 
trary,  paid  a  posthumous  penalty  for  his  sins 
by  furnishing  a  moral  issue  in  biography, 
over  ichich  there  is  even  to  this  day  unpro 
fitable  contest.  Worse  yet,  he  has  become 
one  of  the  toys  in  the  childish  game  of  inter 
national  and  intersectional  prejudice-pitch 
ing.  Europe,  delighting  to  praise  him,  but 
ignorant  of  the  biographical  facts,  has  sent  us 
the  best  critical  essays,  with  an  inkling  that 
so  fine  a  poet  is  more  than  we  deserve  who 
do  not  enshrine  him  in  our  Hall  of  Fame 
and  persist  in  telling  unpleasant  truths  about 
his  life.  New  England,  surcharged  with 
the  burden  of  Longfellow  and  Whittier  and 
remembering  that  Emerson  dismissed  Poe 


x  PEEFACE 

as  u  the  jingle  man,"  has  turned  cautious 
eyes  from  the  pacific,  homely  records  of  its 
own  poets  to  the  unlovely  story  of  Poe,  and 
has  betrayed  its  inherited  doubt  whether  a 
bad  man  can  be  a  good  poet.  Virginia,  not 
yet  accustomed  to  feel  that  the  country  as  a 
whole  has  title  right  to  wear  her  jewels,  has 
given  Poe  an  individual  setting  in  her  crown 
whence  he  throws  a  light  not  universally 
poetic,  but  peculiarly  Virginian.  Sympathy 
with  poets  should  transcend  defence  of  their 
private  morals.  In  its  best  temper,  biography 
takes  only  a  cool  interest  in  Byron's  amours 
or  Shelley's  desertion  of  his  wife.  But,  if 
the  starker  ethical  principles  will  not  retreat 
from  biography,  certainly  geographical  con 
siderations  can  be  persuaded  not  to  inter 
fere. 

The  Life  and  Letters  of  Poe  should  be 
put  together  at  this  day  by  some  one  strong 
enough  to  ignore  no  fact  and  large  enough 
not  to  follow  too  creepingly  the  surviving 
documents.  This  little  sketch  can,  of  course, 
undertake  no  such  broad  adjustment  of  the 


PEEFACB  xi 

story  ofPoe.  It  follows  conventionally  from 
one  to  another  of  the  topics  usually  discussed 
in  more  extended  accounts.  But  it  seeks 
to  treat  those  topics  icith  fairness  to  Poe 
and  to  give  the  reader  a  right  view  of 
the  man  as  seen  from  modern  days  and  in- 

terests. 

J.  M. 

WBENTHAM,  MASSACHUSETTS, 
August  26, 1907. 


CHEONOLOGY 

1809 

January  19.     Edgar   Poe  was  born  in 
Boston. 

1811 

December  8.     His  mother  died. 
December  25.    Eichmond  Theatre  burned. 
Poe  was  taken  into  the  family  of  John 
Allan. 

1815 

June  17.    The  Allans  took  Poe  to  Eng 
land. 

Autumn.     Poe  was  sent  to  Manor  House 
School,  Stoke  Newington,  near  London. 

1820 

June  20.     Poe  left  England. 
August  2.    Arrived  at  Eichmond. 

1820-25 

In  school    under    Masters    Clarke   and 
Burke. 


xiv  CHEONOLOGY 

1826 

February  14.     Entered  the  University  of 
Virginia. 
December  15.     Left  the  University. 

1827 

Published  Tamerlane  and  Other  Poems  in 
Boston. 

May  26.     Enlisted  in  the  United  States 
Army. 

1829 

January  1.     Appointed  sergeant-major. 
February  28.     Mrs.  Allan  died. 
April  15.     Poe    was     honourably     dis 
charged  from  the  army. 
Published    Al    Aaraaf,   Tamerlane,   and 
Minor  Poems  in  Baltimore. 

1830 

July  1.     Entered  West  Point. 
October  5.     Mr.  Allan  married  his  sec 
ond  wife. 

1831 

March  6.     Poe  was  dismissed  from  West 
Point. 


CHBOFOLOGY  xv 

1831  (continued) 

Published  Poems,  Second  Edition,  in  Hew 
York. 

1831-33 
Obscure  years  in  Baltimore. 

1833 

October.  Published  in  Saturday  Visiter 
"A.  MS.  Found  in  a  Bottle, "  which  won 
a  prize  of  one  hundred  dollars. 

1834 
March  27.     Mr.  Allan  died. 

1835 

Published  in  Southern  Literary  Messen 
ger  " Berenice,"  "Morella,"  " Shadow/' 
and  other  tales  and  criticisms. 
November.  Assistant  editor  of  Messenger. 
September  22.  Secured  license  for  mar 
riage  with  Virginia  Clemm. 

1836 

Published  more  tales  and  criticisms  in 
Messenger. 
May  16.     Married  Virginia  Clemm. 


xvi  CHRONOLOGY 

1837 

January  3.  Ceased  to  be  editor  of  Mes 
senger. 

Went  to  Baltimore,  Philadelphia,  New 
York. 

1838 

July.      Narrative  of  Arthur  Gordon  Pym 
was  published  by  Harpers. 
Settled  in  Philadelphia. 

1839 

April.  Published  The  ConchologisV  s  First 
Book. 

July.  Became  associate  editor  of  Gentle 
man's  Magazine. 

Published  " Silence,"  " The  Fall  of  the 
House  of  Usher,"  u  William  Wilson," 
and  other  tales  and  criticisms. 

1840 

January-June.  Published  "  Journal  of 
Julius  Rodman." 

June.  Resigned  from  Gentleman7  s  Maga 
zine. 


CHEOXOLOGY  xvii 

1840  (continued) 

December.  Published  Tales  of  the  Gro 
tesque  and  Arabesque,  in  two  volumes,  in 
Philadelphia. 

1841 

April.    Became  editor  of  Graham*  s  Maga 
zine. 
Published  "  Murders  in  the  Eue  Morgue." 

1842 

April.  Eesigned  from  Graham7  s  Maga 
zine.  Published  "The  Oval  Portrait'7 
and  "The  Masque  of  the  Eed  Death. » 

1843 

Issued  prospectus  of  a  magazine. 
Applied  for  a  clerkship  in  Washington. 
Published  "The  Tell-tale  Heart, »  "The 
Pit  and  the  Pendulum, "  "The  Mystery 
of  Marie  Eog6t, ' '  "  The  Gold  Bug > >  (one- 
hundred-dollar  prize  story). 

1844 
April.    Moved  to  N"ew  York. 


xviii  CHKONOLOGY 

1844  (continued) 

Published    "The  Balloon  Hoax,"    "A 
Tale  of  the  Bagged  Mountains." 
Became  assistant  editor  on  Willis's  Even 
ing  Mirror. 

1845 

Wiley  &  Putnam  published  Tales. 
February  28.     Lectured  in  New  York. 
March.    Withdrew  from  Mirror  and  be 
came  co-editor  of  Broadway  Journal. 
Attacked  Longfellow. 
October.     Became    sole    proprietor     of 
Broadway  Journal. 

October  16.     Lectured  before  Boston  Ly 
ceum. 

December  26.     Bade  farewell  to  Broad 
way  Journal. 

Published     "The     Purloined    Letter," 
"The    Imp    of  the    Perverse,"    "The 
Facts  in  the  Case  of  M.  Yaldemar." 
December  31.      Wiley  &  Putnam  pub 
lished  The  Raven  and  Other  Poems. 


CHEONOLOGY  xix 

1846 

Spring.     Bemoved  to  Fordhani. 
Published   "The   Literati77    and    "The 
Cask  of  Amontillado. 7  7 
Newspapers  appealed  to  charity  in  behalf 
of  the  Poes. 

1847 

January  30.    Virginia  Poe  died. 
February  17.    Awarded  damages  for  libel 
by  Thomas  Dunn  English. 
Published  "Ulalume." 


1848 

February  3.     Lectured  in  New  York  on 
"The  Cosmos  of  the  Universe.7' 
George  P.  Putnam  published  the  final 
form  of  this  lecture  as  Eureka,  a  Prose 
Poem. 

Lectured  in  several  cities  and  began  or 
renewed  acquaintance  with  Mrs.  Whit 
man,  Annie  Eichmond,  Mrs.  Shelton. 


xi  CHKOKOLOGY 

1849 

Published ' '  For  Annie, >  >  '  'Annabel  Lee, '  > 
"The  Bells.?? 

July-September.     Was  in  Biehmond. 
September  29-30.     Left  Eichmond. 
October  7.     Died  in  Baltimore. 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE. 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE. 
I. 

EDGAR  POE'S  life  begins  and  ends 
in  obscurity,  and  includes  several  years 
about  which  little  is  known.  For  this 
his  secret! veness  and  mendacity  are  some 
what  responsible.  He  is  authority  for 
the  statements  that  he  was  born  in  1811 
and  in  1813.  The  date  accepted  as  true, 
January  19, 1809,  is  that  which  he  wrote 
in  the  matriculation  book  of  the  Univer 
sity  of  Virginia.  When  Poe  died  at  the 
age  of  forty,  famous  in  three  nations,  his 
closest  literary  associates  thought  that 
his  birthplace  was  Baltimore.  It  was 
in  fact  Boston,  the  "  Frogpondium" 
which  he  satirised  in  undutiful  despite. 

The  Poe  family  may  be  traced  back 
to  one  of  Cromwell's  Irish  officers  through 
John  Poe,  who  came  from  the  north  of 
Ireland  to  Pennsylvania  in  1745.  Who 
ever  will  may  discern  the  Keltic  strain  in 


\9\         EDGAR  ALLAN  FOB 
Poe,  and  by  it  account  for  his  melancholy, 
his  sentimentalism,  and  the  magic  of  his 
poetry.   Perhaps  his  want  of  humour  may 
be  ascribed  to  his  English  mother.     Con 
jectures  as  to  Poe's  inherited  characteris 
tics  are  safest  when  they  deal  only  with 
his  immediate  ancestry,  his  stage-struck 
father  and  his  pretty  mother,   actress, 
dancer,  and  singer. 

Poe's  father  was  David,  son  of  David 
Poe,  of  Baltimore.  The  first  David  was 
assistant  quartermaster-general  during 
the  Revolution.  He  was  patriotic  and 
valorous.  To  his  country  in  the  throes 
of  rebellion  he  gave  money,  and  after  the 
successful  issue  of  the  Revolution  he  was 
not  reimbursed.  In  our  second  war  he 
fought  in  the  ranks  at  the  age  of  seventy- 
two.  A  dozen  years  later  Lafayette  . 
kissed  the  grave  of  David  Poe,  and  said, 
"Ici  repose  un  cceur  noble. "  Warrior 
David  was  not  the  man  to  forgive  his  son 
for  quitting  the  sober  profession  of  law 
and  pulling  on  the  poor  actor7  sundarned 


EDGAE  ALLAN  FOE  3 

buskin  and  sock.  Until  genius  chose  to 
shine  in  a  poor  relation,  tlie  other  Poes 
were  not  friendly  to  the  family  of  David, 
the  actor,  though  some  of  them  lent 
Edgar  money  and  the  General  took  care 
of  Edgar's  brother,  William.  Player 
father  and  poet  son  were  social  outcasts 
and  ne'er-do-weels. 

David  was  a  poor  performer,  unthrifty 
and  addicted  to  drink.  He  rendered  no 
service  to  art  except  to  beget  an  artist, 
and  he  disappears  early  from  the  records. 
The  distinguished  son  says  that  his 
mother  and  father  died  within  the  same 
few  weeks. 

The  mother  was  Elizabeth  Arnold, 
widow  of  an  actor  named  Hopkins.  IsTot 
foreseeing  that  she  would  be  of  interest 
to  biographers,  she  failed  to  carry  out 
the  elopement  they  afterward  planned 
for  her,  and  instead  married  David  Poe 
in  regular  manner.  They  lived  three 
years  in  Boston,  and  played  in  the  prin 
cipal  American  cities.  She  is  well 


4  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

spoken  of  in  the  newspapers  of  the  time 
as  entertaining  actress  and  good  woman. 
But  the  theatre  in  America  was  not  a 
prosperous  institution,  and  the  family 
knew  poverty  and  misery. 

Elizabeth  and  David  Poe  had  three 
children.  The  first,  William  Henry 
Leonard,  who  died  in  early  manhood, 
was  reputed  clever  and  adventuresome. 
The  third,  Rosalie,  outlived  her  illustri 
ous  brother,  but  seems  not  to  have  been 
strong  of  mind  or  body.  Elizabeth 
Arnold  Poe  died  in  Richmond  on  De 
cember  8, 1811.  On  the  following  Christ 
mas  night  the  Richmond  Theatre  was 
burned,  and  many  were  lost,  including 
the  Governor  of  Virginia.  The  Memo 
rial  Church  in  Richmond  marks  the 
place  of  real  and  mimic  tragedy.  Those 
who  died  in  the  fire  lie  buried  in  the 
portico.  In  the  rush  of  charity  succeed 
ing  the  disaster  prompt  refuge  was 
offered  to  the  actress's  children.  Will 
iam  was  taken  by  his  father's  friends 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE  5 

or  kinsmen  in  Baltimore ;  a  Eichmond 
lady,  Mrs.  McKenzie,  mothered  Eosalie; 
and  Edgar  became  socially,  though  never 
formally,  the  adopted  son  of  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
John  Allan. 

John  Allan  was  a  Scotsman.  The 
house  of  Ellis  &  Allan  was  building  up 
a  tobacco  business  in  Eichmond.  Stories 
abound  of  the  rich  man's  suppers  at 
which  young  Edgar  stood  on  the  table 
and  amused  the  company  by  precocious 
song  and  declamation.  Some  biographers 
are  moved  by  the  picture  of  the  young 
Poe  sent  downward  on  his  road  to  ruin 
by  the  indulgent  hand  of  an  opulent 
foster-father.  In  point  of  fact,  Mr.  Allan 
was  not  rich.  His  firm  assigned  in  the 
year  when  Edgar  was  thirteen.  At  the 
time  that  Poe  came  under  Allan's  roof, 
that  roof  was  above  the  second  or  third 
story  of  his  tobacco  shop.  It  was  not 
until  later  that  the  death  of  a  relative 
made  the  Allans  wealthy.  Mr.  Allan 
opened  his  house  to  Poe  probably  at  the 


6  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

instance  of  his  young  wife,  —  they  were 
childless  after  several  years  of  married 
life, — and  he  was  a  sensible,  long-suffer 
ing  guardian  to  his  wayward  charge. 
There  is  nothing  to  censure  in  Allan 
except  his  failure  to  recognise  genius 
before  it  revealed  itself. 

In  the  summer  of  1815  he  went  to  Eng 
land  to  establish  a  London  branch  of  his 
business.  His  six-year-old  proteg6  was 
sent  to  the  Manor  House  School  in  Stoke 
Newington,  a  suburb  of  London.  This 
school  is  shadowed  forth  in  "  William 
Wilson.'7  The  biographer  finds  in  the 
relation  between  the  school  at  Stoke 
Newington  and  the  early  career  of  Will 
iam  Wilson  an  instance  of  Poe's  remark 
able  sensational  memory.  No  record, 
however,  that  Poe  makes  of  his  expe 
riences,  either  in  avowed  autobiography 
or  in  fiction,  can  be  accepted  at  face 
value.  It  is  not  the  part  of  the  fiction- 
maker  to  reveal  himself  directly  in  his 
stories,  and  Poe  was  a  fictionist,  not  only 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE  7 

in  his  narratives,  but  in  his  letters  and 
other  records  of  his  life  and  character. 

The  Allans  stayed  in  England  five 
years.  That  the  Virginian  merchant 
was  in  a  measure  prosperous  is  indicated 
by  the  recollection  many  years  later  of 
the  head  of  the  school,  Dr.  Bransby,  that 
young  Poe  had  too  much  pocket  money. 
The  Poe  records  contain  a  large  amount 
of  reminiscence  accordant  with  some  be 
lief  or  fact  about  Poe  which  developed 
in  after  years. 

The  English  school  no  doubt  gave  Poe 
that  old-fashioned  grounding  in  essen 
tials,  resting  upon  which  his  native  alert 
ness  made  his  course  in  American  schools 
easy  and  pleasant. 

On  their  return  to  Eiehmond  in  1820 
the  Allans  placed  Poe  in  a  school  con 
ducted  then  by  Joseph  Clarke,  of  Trin 
ity  College,  Dublin,  and  later  by  another 
Irishman,  William  Burke.  All  that  we 
know  of  Poe's  character  at  this  time  is 
that  he  was  quick  of  brain  and  body. 


8  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

He  may  have  been  proud  and  aloof. 
His  companions  may  have  remembered 
that  his  parents  were  actors,  and  have 
denied  him  the  leadership  which  heroes 
of  biographies  merit.  When  we  look 
back  on  the  boyhood  of  a  "  future  poet," 
our  vision  is  intercepted  by  the  poet 
that  stands  between.  Poe's  nimble  brain 
no  doubt  kept  him  in  the  favour  of  his 
teachers.  His  body  was  so  sound  and 
supple  that  he  was  able  to  compass  one 
poetic  episode  which  links  him  appro 
priately  with  Byron.  He  swam  a  six 
mile  stretch  on  the  James  Eiver  and 
walked  home  unfatigued.  His  precocity 
in  literature  is  not  evident  in  any  fact 
of  this  period,  although  it  is  said  that  at 
the  age  of  ten  or  twelve  he  showed  Mr. 
Allan  a  manuscript  volume  of  poems, 
which  of  course  that  parental  villain  did 
not  appreciate  ;  and  Poe  was  good  at  elo 
cution,  an  art  practised  more  by  Amer 
ican  school-boys  then  than  now. 
There  is  a  story  that  the  mother  of  one 


EDGAE  ALLAtf  POE  9 

of  his  playmates  "  befriended "  him  (he 
was  at  this  time  thoroughly  befriended 
at  home),  that  she  became  the  "  con 
fidante  of  his  boyish  sorrows,"  and  that, 
when  she  died,  he  haunted  her  grave  of 
nights.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  this  ro 
mantic  lingering  upon  a  lady's  grave 
foreshadows  much  in  Poe?s  poetry  and 
prose.  It  is  as  easy  to  see  that  Poe's 
poetry  and  prose  suggest  the  story,  which 
he  himself  related.  He  called  the  lady 
Helen  because  he  did  not  like  her  real 
name,  Jane.  The  change  was  evidently 
made  by  a  poet  with  a  mature  ear  ; 
that  is,  after  he  had  written  ( '  To  Helen, 7  > 
which  is  to  nobody  in  particular.  Poe's 
ladies  are  as  visionary  as  the  Julias  and 
Altheas  of  Herrick.  The  difference  is 
that  Herrick  expressed  a  fleshly  warmth 
toward  ladies  who  never  were,  whereas 
Poe  attached  his  visions,  the  creatures 
of  a  pretty  name  in  his  head,  to  what 
ever  lady  happened  to  be  interesting 
him.  He  fitted  poetic  abstractions  — 


10          EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

the  same  poetic  abstraction  —  to  several 
women ;  and,  since  there  is  singularly 
little  human  passion  in  his  work,  it  is 
likely  that  his  conception  of  women  was 
usually  untinged  by  desires  of  the  blood. 

The  grave-haunting  yarn  belongs  in 
Poe's  biography  because  he  made  it  and 
because  it  may  have  root  in  fact.  At 
the  age  of  thirty-nine,  a  year  before  his 
death,  Poe  referred  to  this  story  in  a  let 
ter  to  a  poetess.  Poets  and  poetesses 
communicate  and  receive  ideas  which 
the  facts  of  life  do  not  support. 

It  is  not  necessary  either  to  take  too 
seriously  the  story  of  Poe's  attachment 
to  Sarah  Elmira  Eoyster,  his  young 
neighbour,  except  to  credit  her  statement 
that  her  father  intercepted  Poe's  letters. 
Miss  Eoyster  was  presently  married  at 
the  age  of  seventeen.  She  appears  later 
in  Poe's  life  as  the  severe-lipped  widow, 
Mrs.  Shelton.  For  the  present  we  may 
imagine  him  poetically  desolate  at  her 
marriage. 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE          11 

In    1825    Mr.   Allan  came    into    his 
uncle7  s  fortune.     The  spendthrift  habits 
by  which  Poe  is  supposed  to  have  been 
unfitted  for  his  later  life  of  poverty  be 
gan  now,  if  ever,  and  could  have  con 
tinued  but  a  year  or  so,  for  Poe  abused 
his  guardian's  new  wealth,  and  Mr.  Al 
lan  soon  took  him  to  task.    Poe  prepared 
under  tutors  for  the  University  of  Vir 
ginia,    and    entered    it   on     the    14th 
of  February,  1826.     This  institution  had 
been  opened  the  year  before.     Its  dis 
tinguished  founder  lived  a  few  months 
to  enjoy  the  fatherhood  of   his  college 
and  to  find  the  practical  difficulties  in 
the  methods  of  administration  which  he 
had  contrived.    Jefferson's  fine  and  high 
idea  was  to  import  European  culture 
(six  of  the  eight  professors  were  foreign- 
born),   to    make    university   education 
free,  and  to  dispense  democratically  with 
formal     degrees    and    discipline.      His 
dream  was  part  of  the  early  American 
confidence  in  unhindered  human  nature. 


12  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 
The  elective  system,  whereby  Calvin's 
God  abdicated  in  favor  of  Democracy's 
child,  was  born  in  Jefferson's  university. 
The  difficulty  at  "the  University7'  was 
not  with  the  elective  system,  but  with 
the  whole  combination  of  new  theories 
and  old  human  facts.  The  European 
teachers  were  not  used  to  conducting 
classes  over  which  they  had  no  disciplin 
ary  power.  The  young  men  who  could 
take  advantage  of  free  higher  education 
were  of  course  the  sons  of  the  well-to-do, 
and  Poe  and  his  classmates  were  boys, 
with  a  different  idea  of  honour  from  that 
of  old  men. 

Poe  elected  "ancient  and  modern  lan 
guages.  "  He  had  no  difficulty  in  keep 
ing  up  his  class  record.  He  showed  his 
aptitude  in  things  linguistic,  and  browsed 
among  the  books  in  the  library.  Once 
when  the  instructor  in  Italian  suggested 
as  optional  work  a  translation  from  a 
passage  of  Tasso,  Poe  was  the  only  one 


EDGAE  ALLAK  POE  13 
in  the  class  to  respond,  and  he  was  com 
mended  for  his  rendering. 

Poe  never  fell  under  faculty  censure 
or  did  anything  to  distinguish  him  from 
his  fellows  in  point  of  wildness  or  diso 
bedience.  When  the  Board  of  Visitors 
appealed  to  the  civil  authorities  to  bring 
discipline  into  the  young  educational 
democracy  and  a  sheriff  appeared  with 
writs  for  the  gaming  students,  Poe  was 
only  one  of  many  who  bolted.  Like  his 
companions,  he  gambled  and  drank.  It 
was  the  gambling  which  was  his  imme 
diate  undoing.  Mr.  Allan  refused  to 
pay  his  gaming  debts,  and  on  the 
15th  of  December,  1826,  after  ten 
months  in  the  university,  Poe  ended  his 
academic  schooling.  He  stood  his  final 
examinations  with  credit :  the  examin 
ations  in  any  American  college  of  that 
time  must  have  been  easy  for  a  clever 
boy  to  stand. 

In  the  university  he  encountered  the 
dangers  of  alcohol,  not  because  he  was 


14  EDGAE  ALLAN  FOB 
in  college  or  because  he  was  in  this  par 
ticular  college,  but  because  he  lived  in 
a  civilised  community  and  was  eighteen 
years  old.  He  must  needs  learn  at  this 
time — and,  being  what  he  was,  he  could 
not  learn  wisely — his  physiological  inca 
pacity  for  alcohol. 

Most  that  has  been  written  of  Poe's 
encounters  with  the  demon  rum  has  been 
based  upon  ignorance  of  the  demon,  or 
upon  insufficient  knowledge  of  Poe,  or 
upon  an  elaborate  pseudo-psychology 
which  is  current  in  France,  whereby  Poe 
is  represented  as  dipping  his  pen  in  a 
pot  of  alcohol,  his  fine  poems  are  ex 
plained  as  neurological  phenomena,  and 
he  is  made  spirituous  forefather  of  all 
absinthe  poetry.  Poe  is  an  exotic  ;  he  is 
strangely  un-American ;  he  is  what  we 
Anglo-Saxons  think  of  as  "Frenchy." 
His  work  has  enjoyed  the  refinements  of 
French  criticism  and  the  literary  sincer 
ity  of  a  great  French  translator,  and  we 
have  by  intellectual  compulsion  yielded 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE  15 
him  to  France.  But  the  French  have 
not  interpreted  the  man  as  he  lived  in 
these  United  States. 

In  critical  clinics  on  Poe  the  terms  of 
pathology,  ' '  alcoholism ' ?  and  ' i  dipso 
mania,  "  are  familiar  words.  Neither 
term  expresses  Poe'  s  weakness.  Alcohol 
ism  is  disease  resulting  from  exces 
sive  drinking  :  any  one  may  develop  it 
with  perseverance.  Dipsomania  is  an 
uncontrollable  thirst  for  alcohol  :  it  ex 
ists  as  a  disease,  even  if  the  thirst  is  not 
gratified.  There  is  yet  a  third  condition 
which  can  exist  without  excessive  or 
continuous  indulgence  and  without  an 
initial  morbid  craving.  Under  this  con 
dition  the  "  patient "  is  affected  by  al 
cohol  and  other  drugs  as  if  he  were  a 
cold-blooded  animal.  There  is  imme 
diate  unbalance,  hysteria,  insanity,  a 
poisoned  condition.  Such,  according  to 
the  evidence,  was  the  effect  of  liquor  on 
Poe.  One  glass  sent  him  off  his  head. 
He  was  never  pleasantly  intoxicated. 


16  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 
His  longer  sprees  were  dreary  illnesses. 
He  was  not  a  jolly  carouser.  He  did  not 
make  crafty  effort  to  get  liquor.  His 
indulgence  was  fitful,  due  to  accidental 
meetings  and  opportunities,  and  later  to 
starvation  and  misery.  He  was  clear 
headed  enough  to  know  this  when  he 
wrote  that  misery  made  the  vice,  not 
vice  the  misery.  His  life  was  not  a 
downward  course  under  self- indulgence, 
but  a  retreat  on  the  level  in  the  face  of 
a  chemical  fact.  He  seldom  had  money 
enough  to  pay  for  much  liquor,  and  the 
quantity  of  work  that  he  did  in  twenty 
years  is  proof  that  he  was  not  drunk  for 
relatively  many  working  days.  At  im 
portant  crises  in  his  career  drinking 
helped  to  bring  disaster.  He  was  not 
the  good  fellow  to  compel  forgiveness  of 
his  sins,  as  we  forgive  the  swaggering 
intoxications  of  Byron  and  the  domestic 
evenings  with  Burgundy  in  which  Lamb 
drowned  his  tragedies  and  delighted 
his  friends.  All  that  we  can  ask  for 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  17 
Poe  is  that  defenders  shall  not  ob 
scure  the  truth,  and  that  others  relin 
quish  the  assumption  that  a  pure  poetic 
heart  and  a  head  marvellously  clear  can 
not  be  borne  by  feet  that  stagger.  In 
the  last  decade  of  Poe's  life,  after  too 
much  drinking  and  periods  of  malnutri 
tion,  he  was  so  elastic  and  fine-muscled 
that  he  jumped  and  played  leap-frog  to 
the  destruction  of  his  only  pair  of  shoes. 
And  he  was  to  the  end  of  his  life  so 
clear-minded,  in  his  professional  writing, 
that  no  comma  was  misplaced,  and  his 
manuscript  is  in  itself  a  work  of  manual 
art. 

Poe  was  a  weak  man  with  a  great 
brain,  small  in  his  failings,  not  giganti- 
caUj^wicked.  We  do  not  pretend  to  like 
him  as  we  do  large  natures  that  fail. 

But  a  golden  tankard  with  dents  in  it 
is  not  chiefly  interesting  for  the  liquor 
it  has  held.  Poe's  worst  vices  were  not 
drunkenness,  nor  yet  his  philandering 
with  sentimental  women,  but  his  dis- 


18  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 
honesty,  his  failure  to  pay  his  debts  of 
deed  and  word.  Poe  produced  books 
which  are  of  consequence  in  the  history 
of  our  country  and  in  the  world's  library. 
It  ought  to  be  interesting  to  see  the  con 
ditions  under  which  those  books  were 
produced.  As  we  are  human,  we  crave 
to  know  when  Shakespeare  was  married 
and  on  what  occasions  Poe  befuddled  his 
fine  brain,  but  the  Poe  that  lives  is  the 
dreamer  of  dreams  imaged  in  the  pen 
sive  head  that  adorns  the  University  of 
Virginia. 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE          19 

II. 

After  leaving  the  University  of  Vir 
ginia,  Poe  was  not  in  Mr.  Allan's  favour, 
though  the  final  break  did  not  come  till 
later.  For  a  while  he  chafed  in  Mr. 
Allan's  counting-room,  where  he  must 
soon  have  shown  his  incapacity  for  busi 
ness  affairs.  His  failure  as  clerk,  his 
bad  debts,  and  something  in  him  of  vaga 
bond  and  adventurer  sent  him  on  his 
way.  In  1827  he  was  in  Boston,  where 
he  "  commenced  author "  and  turned 
soldier.  Tamerlane  and  Other  Poems  by 
a  Bostonian  is  a  remarkable  first  book. 
The  bumptious  preface,  now  that  we 
know  what  a  poet  it  ushered  into  the 
world  of  letters,  seems  to  have  the  con 
fident  swing  of  genius.  Everything  of 
value  in  the  booklet  was  later  revised 
and  reprinted.  The  best  of  it  is  in  kind, 
if  not  in  pitch,  unmistakably  Poesque, 
and  from  this  feeble  beginning  to  "Ula- 
lume"  of  twenty  years  later  the  work 


20          EDGAR  ALLAK  POE 

of  Poe  in  prose  and  poetry  is  distinct 
from  all  other  things  in  books. 

Tamerlane  made  no  stir  in  the  world, 
and  in  after  years  the  publisher,  Calvin 
Thomas,  apparently  did  not  know  until 
he  was  told  that  the  manuscript  had  been 
fetched  to  him  under  the  arm  of  the 
great  Mr.  Poe.  Perhaps  Mr.  Poe  ap 
peared  before  his  first  publisher  as  Mr. 
Edgar  A.  Perry,  for  it  was  under  that 
name  that  he  enlisted  on  May  26,  1827, 
in  the  United  States  Army.  He  went 
with  Battery  H  of  the  First  Artillery 
from  Fort  Independence  in  Boston  to 
Fort  Moultrie  in  Charleston,  thence 
to  Fortress  Monroe,  Virginia.  Although 
his  career  in  the  army  seems  to  have 
been  meritorious,  he  kept  this  period  of 
his  life  in  the  dark,  and  to  fill  in  the 
years  invented  picturesque  stories  of 
having  joined  the  Greeks  in  their  war 
for  independence  and  of  having  written 
and  published  a  novel  in  France. 

Early  in  1829  Mr.  Allan  was  informed 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE  21 
of  the  whereabouts  of  Sergeant-major 
Perry-Poe,  and  after  Mrs.  Allan's  death 
in  February  Poe  went  on  furlough  to 
Eichmond.  Perhaps  he  received  assur 
ances  that  Mr.  Allan  would  help  him  to 
the  extent  of  getting  comfortably  rid  of 
him,  for  he  planned  to  seek  appointment 
to  the  United  States  Military  Academy. 
On  April  15, 1829,  he  was  honourably  dis 
charged  from  the  army,  having  procured 
a  substitute  for  whom  Mr.  Allan  paid. 
Mr.  Allan's  letter  to  the  Secretary  of 
War  should  have  shown  the  applicant 
who  bore  it  how  far  he  could  presume  on 
the  merchant's  good  will.  " Frankly, 
sir,  I  do  declare  that  he  is  no  relation  to 
me  whatever ;  that  I  have  many  [in] 
whom  I  have  taken  an  active  interest  to 
promote  theirs ;  with  no  other  feeling 
than  that  every  man  is  my  care,  if  he 
be  in  distress.7' 

Poe  gathered  other  credentials,  and 
went  toward  Washington.  On  his  way 
he  published  in  Baltimore  his  second 


22          EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

volume,  Al  Aaraaf,  Tamerlane,  and  Minor 
Poertis.  He  had  sent  manuscript  copies 
of  the  verses  to  John  Neal,  then  an  im 
portant  personage  in  the  world  of  litera 
ture.  Neal  had  said  in  the  Yankee  that 
E.  A.  P.,  of  Baltimore,  "  might  write  a 
beautiful,  if  not  a  magnificent  poem." 
In  a  later  number  he  quoted  Poe's  am 
bitious  reply :  "  I  am  quite  certain  that  I 
have  not  written  either  —  but  that  I  can, 
I  will  take  oath  —  if  they  will  give  me 
time."  The  Boston  editor  was  amused 
by  the  confidence  of  the  letter,  but  he 
was  also  impressed  by  the  poetry,  from 
which  he  quoted  liberally,  and  con 
cluded  :  "  Having  allowed  our  youthful 
writer  to  be  heard  in  his  own  behalf, — 
what  more  can  we  do  for  the  lovers  of 
genuine  poetry?  Nothing.  They  who 
are  judges  will  not  need  more  ;  and  they 
who  are  not  —  why  waste  words  upon 
them?  "We  shall  not."  This  good- 
natured  comment  of  Poe's  first  critic 
serves  fairly  well,  after  three-quarters 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE  23 
of  a  century,  for  the  "last  word"  to 
readers  of  Poe's  poetry. 

The  Baltimore  volume  contained  five 
revised  pieces  from  the  volume  of  1827. 
"Al  Aaraaf,"  the  new  title  poem,  is 
over- elaborate  and  obscure,  but  it  is  so 
characteristic  of  Poe  in  its  combination 
of  starry  vision  and  pseudo- astronomy 
that  it  is  of  a  piece  with  "  Eureka,"  his 
last  work,  and  it  contains  fine  imagery 
and  music  of  a  kind  which  men  who 
began  to  read  in  the  sunset  of  the  Vic 
torian  age  will  think  of  as  "  modern " :  — 

"  Falling  in  wreaths  through  many  a 

startled  star." 
"  The  eternal  voice  of  God  is  moving  by, 

And  the  red  winds  are  withering  in 
the  sky." 

Such  lines  and  the  song, 

"  Spirit  that  dwellest  where 

In  the  deep  sky 

The  terrible  and  fair 

In  beauty  vie," 

whether  we  take  them  from  the  Balti- 


24          EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

more  volume  or  the  later  revisions,  carry 
Poe  into  the  company  of  strange  singers 
from  Shelley  and  Coleridge  to  Eossetti 
and  James  Thomson. 

The  Baltimore  volume  is  noteworthy 
for  the  literary  sophistication  of  the 
foot-notes.  Critics  have  broken  the  but 
terfly  upon  the  wheel  by  pointing  out 
that  Poe  quoted  at  second-hand  from 
authors  he  had  not  read,  and  that  he 
made  a  false  show  of  learning.  The 
important  thing  is  that  he  quoted  with 
literary  tact,  and  it  required  much  dili 
gent  criticism  to  find  him  out.  Emer 
son  likewise  drew  analogies  and  illustra 
tions  from  religions  and  literatures  of 
which  he  knew  little,  and  Carlyle's  defi 
nition  of  kingship  is  not  less  eloquent 
because  his  discovery  of  "king"  and 
"ableman"  in  a  common  source  is  false 
philology. 

Poe's  new  book  found  little  welcome 
except  in  the  quizzical  appreciation  of 
Neal,  and  did  not  divert  the  poet  from 


EDGAE  ALLAK  POE          25 

his  soldierly  aspirations.  He  entered 
West  Point  on  July  1,  1830,  and  thus, 
like  a  later  undisciplined  and  eccentric 
American  artist,  he  became  associated 
with  an  institution  of  rigid  bearing  and 
dutiful  formality.  When  Poe  entered 
the  Academy,  he  was  older  than  the  al 
lowed  age  limit,  twenty-one,  but,  being 
a  master  of  mathematical  puzzles,  he  had 
no  difficulty  in  being  recorded  as  under 
twenty.  He  looked  older  than  he  really 
was,  and  the  story  was  circulated  that 
the  appointment  had  been  intended  for 
the  son,  but  the  father  had  come  instead. 
This  story  rightly  suggests  a  prematurely 
old  youth  who  had  seen  a  good  deal  of 
the  world  and  whose  vocabulary  and 
intellectual  interests  were  a  decade  in 
advance  of  boyish  cadetship.  The  story 
did  not  please  him  so  much  as  another 
one,  even  less  warranted  by  the  facts, 
that  he  was  a  grandson  of  Benedict  Ar 
nold.  Like  Byron,  who  also  swam, 
wrote  poetry,  and  championed  the 


26          EDGAR  ALLAJST  POE 

Greeks,  Poe  enjoyed  dark  reputations. 
Poe's  literary  tastes  were  known  to  his 
associates.  He  was  glib  and  dogmatic 
in  his  criticisms  of  books  which  his  fel 
lows  probably  did  not  read,  and  he 
made  satirical  jests  in  rhyme  about  the 
instructors,  one  stanza  of  which  still 
remains.  But  he  was  not  regular  in 
class-room  work.  He  was  insubordinate, 
and  his  infringements  of  regulations  in 
creased  as  the  year  waned. 

It  is  assumed  that  Mr.  Allan's  second 
marriage  in  October,  1830,  made  Poe 
more  than  ever  doubtful  of  succeeding  to 
any  part  of  his  guardian's  fortune,  and 
Poe  said  later,  in  effect,  that  the  pros 
pect  of  living  on  a  soldier's  wage  did 
not  please  him.  He  tried  to  resign, 
but  Mr.  Allan  did  not  approve,  and 
Poe  took  measures  to  have  himself  dis 
missed.  He  was  among  the  delinquents 
summoned  to  court-martial  in  January, 
1831.  Before  his  case  came  on  the  calen 
dar,  he  neglected  his  duties.  Then  he 


EDGAB  ALLAN  POE  27 
pleaded  guilty  to  every  charge  except 
the  one  most  easily  proved, — failure  to 
be  at  his  post.  He  was  dismissed,  and  on 
March  6,  1831,  he  found  himself  again 
free,  penniless,  and  without  a  trade  or 
profession. 

He  signalised  his  departure  from  West 
Point  by  taking  subscriptions  from 
the  cadets  for  a  new  volume  of  poems 
which  he  dedicated  to  them.  The  ca 
dets  thought  the  book  would  contain  the 
kind  of  poetry  they  enjoyed, — the  satiri 
cal  skits  on  instructors.  They  received 
instead  of  such  interesting  matter  a  vol 
ume  in  which  there  were,  among  much 
amateurish  poetising,  two  or  three  fine 
poems. 

Poe's  third  volume  contained  revisions 
of  the  best  in  the  Baltimore  volume,  and 
in  addition  "Israfel,"  "To  Helen/7 
"The  Doomed  City  "  ("The  City  in  the 
Sea > >)," Irene "  ("The  Sleeper »),  "The 
Valley  Nis"  ("The  Valley  of  Unrest »).. 
The  earlier  books  of  verse  were  the 


28          EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

doubtful  attempts  of  the  young  poet,  of 
which  we  might  have  forgotten  the  good 
lines  if  later  achievement  had  not  com 
pelled  us  to  scan  them  closely  ;  but  had 
Poe  died  at  the  moment  this  third  vol 
ume  was  published,  it  must  surely  have 
been  remembered,  for  the  original  magic, 
the  haunting  cadence,  the  fresh  use  of 
language,  which  mark  the  new,  the  un 
forgettable  poet.  The  introduction  con 
tains  Poe's  first  enunciation  of  the  prin 
ciple  that  the  purpose  of  poetry  is 
to  utter  a  definite  idea  in  musical  form. 
This  idea,  "the  rhythmical  creation  of 
beauty, "  and  so  on,  has  long  been  com 
monplace,  or  at  least  has  been  com 
monly  accepted  by  poets  from  Coleridge 
to  the  youngest  Irish  bard  in  London, 
That  it  was  revolutionary  in  America  is 
indicated  by  our  tardy  recognition  of 
Poe's  supremacy  among  American  poets 
and  by  the  ascendency  of  those  less  finely 
tuned  moralities  of  American  verse 
against  which  Poe  protested  all  his  life. 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE  29 
Three  days  after  Poe's  dismissal  from 
West  Point  he  wrote  from  New  York  to 
Colonel  Thayer,  the  superintendent  of  the 
Military  Academy  :  "Having  no  longer 
any  tie  which  binds  me  to  my  native 
country, — no  prospects  nor  any  friends, 
— I  intend,  by  the  first  opportunity,  to 
proceed  to  Paris  with  the  view  of  ob 
taining,  through  the  interest  of  the  Mar 
quis  de  La  Fayette  [who,  it  will  be  re 
membered,  admired  Poe?s  grandfather], 
an  appointment,  if  possible,  in  the  Polish 
Army."  He  asks  Colonel  Thayer' s  as 
sistance.  "A  certificate  of  standing  in 
my  class  is  all  I  have  any  right  to  ex 
pect."  This  letter,  not  published  till 
five  years  ago,  shows  that  Poe  seriously 
cherished  those  adventuresome  projects 
which  his  romantic  invention  subse 
quently  transmuted  into  events,  and  that 
he  had  no  immediate  hope  in  Mr.  Allan's 
bounty.  The  story  of  a  violent  scene 
and  his  final  ejection  from  the  Allan 
house  about  this  time  seems  probable. 


30          EDGAE  ALLAtf  POE 

The  next  authentic  record  of  Poe  is 
his  letter  of  the  6th  of  May,  1831,  to 
William  Gwynn,  the  Baltimore  editor 
and  lawyer.  Gwynn  had  expressed  the 
opinion  that  "Al  Aaraaf,"  which  he 
had  seen  in  manuscript,  was  indicative 
of  a  "  tendency  to  anything  but  the  busi 
ness  of  matter-of-fact  life."  This  judg 
ment  was  probably  supported  by  less 
poetical  evidence,  for  Poe  apologised  to 
Gwynn  for  foolish  conduct  on  a  previous 
occasion.  His  request  for  employment 
was  not  granted,  nor  was  one  to  N.  C. 
Brooks,  in  whose  new  school  Poe  hoped 
for  a  place  as  teacher. 

Of  the  next  two  years  of  Poe's  life  the 
records  are  sparse  and  shadowy.  If  Poe 
liked  to  befog  biographers  while  he  ex 
isted  in  the  flesh,  perhaps  his  spirit  is 
contemplating  with  sardonic  pleasure 
the  fact  that  some  of  his  letters  of  this 
time,  known  to  exist,  have  escaped  pub 
lication,  and  that  the  papers  of  John  P. 
Kennedy,  his  benefactor,  are  sealed  by 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE          31 

Kennedy's  will  until  1920.  There  seems 
X)  be  no  good  reason  at  this  late  day  why 
my  possible  source  of  information  about 
Poe  should  be  closed  to  biographers. 
Facts  are  thistles  easily  grasped  by  firm 
lands.  Mystification  and  reticence  have 
lone  more  to  condemn  him  than  any 
inpleasant  revelations.  Charles  G.  Le- 
and's  service  in  destroying  papers  about 
Poe  which  he  found  in  Gris wold's  desk 
.s  nullified  by  our  knowledge  that  the 
papers  were  destroyed. 

Some  legends  belong  to  this  time.  One 
relates  Poe' s  love  for  ' '  Mary, ' ?  whose  oral 
account  of  the  affair  was  first  published 
in  a  magazine  about  twenty  years  ago. 
Her  description  brings  Poe  clearly  into 
vision:  "Mr.  Poe  was  five  feet  eight 
inches  tall,  and  had  dark,  almost  black 
hair,  which  he  wore  long  and  pushed 
back  in  student  style  over  his  ears.  It 
was  as  fine  as  silk.  His  eyes  were  large 
and  full,  grey  and  piercing.  He  was 
then,  I  think,  entirely  clean  shaven. 


32  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 
His  nose  was  long  and  straight,  and  hi 
features  finely  cut.  The  expression  abou 
his  mouth  was  beautiful.  He  was  pal 
and  had  no  color.  His  skin  was  of  i 
clear,  beautiful  olive.  He  had  a  sad 
melancholy  look.  He  was  very  slende 
when  I  first  knew  him,  had  a  fine  figure 
an  erect,  military  carriage,  and  a  quid 
step.  But  it  was  his  manner  that  mos 
charmed.  It  was  elegant.  When  h 
looked  at  you,  it  seemed  as  if  he  couL 
read  your  very  thoughts.  His  voice  wa 
pleasant  and  musical,  but  not  deep.77 

This  description  of  Poe  at  twenty-tw 
resembles  other  verbal  pictures  of  hii 
and  most  of  the  surviving  portraits  take] 
from  life.  It  omits  mention  of  a  strik 
ing  characteristic,  the  great  breadth  be 
tween  the  temples,  and  of  a  curious  twis 
of  his  face,  which  gives  to  one  side 
slightly  sinister  look.  Most  friendly  ac 
counts  of  Poe  dwell  on  his  fine  manner 
and  the  distinction  of  his  bearing.  H 
had  the  training  of  a  Virginia  gentle 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE  33 
man,  and  lie  believed  himself  one. 
Though  he  fell  into  disreputable  habits, 
was  uncertain  in  his  sense  of  honour,  of 
fended  good  breeding  in  his  quarrels, 
and  became  so  reduced  by  poverty  that 
he  could  write  with  enthusiasm  to  his 
mother-in-law  of  the  " elegant  ham'?  in 
a  New  York  boarding-house  (there  is 
tnore  simple  pathos  in  that  letter  than 
in  many  of  his  more  emotional  ones),  yet, 
for  all  that,  he  retained  to  the  last  the 
grand  manner,  the  something  proud, 
aloof,  formally  courteous,  of  the  edu 
cated  gentleman,  the  distinguished  per 
son. 

"Poe's  Mary"  was  not  allowed  to 
continue  her  relations  with  the  penni 
less  young  man,  whereupon  he  ungal- 
lantly  published  a  satirical  poem  about 
her  in  a  Baltimore  paper.  The  young 
lady's  uncle  interfered.  Mr.  Poe  horse 
whipped  him,  and  flung  the  whip  at 
Mary's  feet.  She  afterward  married, 
visited  the  Poes  at  Fordham,  and  was 


34          EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

there  when  Virginia  died.  At  the  time 
of  this  love  affair,  the  story  of  which 
seems  to  have  a  core  of  truth,  Poe  lived 
with  his  aunt,  Mrs.  Maria  Clemm,  and 
her  daughter  Virginia,  aged  ten  or 
eleven,  was  the  bearer  of  Poe's  love 
letters. 

Poe  was  certainly  not  at  this  time  re 
ceived  in  good  society  either  in  Eich- 
mond  or  Baltimore.  There  is  a  tradition 
in  the  Kennedy  family  that  Kennedy 
used  to  drive  down  town  in  Baltimore, 
pull  Poe  out  of  improper  places,  and  take 
him  home.  Mrs.  Kennedy  went  with 
her  husband  on  these  friendly  missions. 
When  Poe  in  sorry  condition  reached 
the  carriage,  the  presence  of  the  lady 
touched  the  spring  of  his  chivalry,  and 
made  him  amenable  to  Kennedy's  min 
istrations.  The  statement  of  Griswold, 
that  Kennedy  gave  Poe  shirt  and  coat, 
is  probably  true.  Poe's  declaration  that 
he  was  indebted  to  Kennedy  for  life  it 
self  seems  to  be  more  than  an  instance  of 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE          35 

he  exaggerated  fervor  which  is  common 
in  Poe's  letters,  and  there  are  indica 
tions  that  Kennedy  knew  and  helped 
Poe  before  they  appear  in  open  relations 
as  judge  and  successful  contestant  in 
the  Saturday  Visiter  prize  competition. 
Whatever  is  discovered  about  the  years 
from  1831  to  1833  will  probably  show  that 
|Poe  was  then  as  low  as  he  ever  was  in 
fortune  and  habits.  Instead  of  repre 
senting  him  as  a  brilliant  youth  going 
down  hill  to  an  early  death,  we  more 
jfairly  discern  him  as  plunged  by  ill  luck 
and  faults  of  temper  into  a  bad  hole  at 
(the  beginning  of  his  manhood  and  fight 
ing  his  way  out  of  it,  with  considerable 
jpluck,  toward  renewed  social  recognition 
iand  successful  industry. 


36          EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

III. 

In  the  summer  of  1833  Foe  emerge! 
from  obscurity  as  the  winner  of  a  prize 
of  one  hundred  dollars  offered  by  the 
Baltimore  Saturday  Visiter  for  the  best 
short  story.  The  prize  of  fifty  dollars 
for  the  best  poem  would  have  beer 
awarded  to  Poe's  "The  Coliseum,77  had 
he  not  won  the  larger  premium.  The 
successful  story,  "MS.  Found  in  a 
Bottle,77  was  one  of  six  "Tales  of  the 
Folio  Club,77  all  submitted  by  Poe  to 
this  contest  and  marking  his  entrance 
upon  his  professional  career.  Poe  re 
garded  himself  as  a  poet  deflected  into 
prose  by  the  necessity  of  earning  a  liv 
ing.  He  had  published  three  books  of 
verse  before  he  tried  the  short  story. 
Then  he  encountered  the  fact  in  Ameri 
can  publication  that  the  short  story  pays 
better  than  any  other  form  of  writing. 
The  short  story  is  the  only  type  of  litera 
ture  to  which  America  has  made  a  con- 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE  37 
siderable  contribution  of  distinguished 
quality,  and  this  is  in  some  measure  due 
to  the  peculiar  dependence,  in  our  social 
order,  of  genius  on  the  wage  conditions 
of  daily  labor.  Poe's  ability  for  criti 
cism  was  revealed  to  him  unexpectedly 
by  the  ringside  applause  at  his  slashing 
strokes  with  the  book  reviewer's  pen. 
For  ten  years,  until  "The  Raven" 
blazed  amid  his  other  reputations,  the 
poet  remained  in  abeyance  5  the  short- 
story  writer  developed  under  the  neces 
sity  of  producing  salable  work;  and  the 
man  found  the  immediate  gratification  of 
his  ambition  for  power  in  his  increasing 
authority  as  critic. 

In  the  fall  of  1833  Poe's  "Tales  of  the 
Folio  Club"  began  to  appear  in  the 
Baltimore  Visiter.  The  judges  in  the 
contest,  Kennedy,  Latrobe,  and  Miller, 
said  in  a  signed  note,  "We  cannot  re 
frain  from  saying  that  the  author  owes  it 
to  his  reputation  ...  to  publish  the  en 
tire  volume.  These  tales  are  eminently 


38  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 
distinguished  by  a  wild,  vigorous,  and 
poetical  imagination,  a  rich  style,  a 
fertile  invention,  and  varied  and  curi 
ous  learning.'7  Poe  was  now  a  promis 
ing  young  author.  His  early  stories, 
including  ten  more  that  he  added  in 
the  next  year  to  the  "  Tales  of  the  Folio 
Club,"  show  most  of  his  characteristics 
of  substance  and  method,  clearness,  com 
pression,  speed,  conviction  in  narrating 
the  extraordinary  and  the  bizarre.  They 
include  none  of  his  masterpieces,  and  were 
no  doubt  less  skilful  in  the  first  versions 
than  in  the  form  which  later  revision 
gave  to  them.  Poe  reprinted  his  tales 
and  poems  in  several  magazines,  to  the 
meagre  profit  of  his  purse  and  to  the 
great  gain  of  art,  for  he  worked  them 
over  with  fine  care,  and  at  each  re 
printing  gave  them  new  excellence. 
There  seems  to  me  nothing  unfair  in  his 
thrifty  reselling  of  old  material.  The 
editors  probably  knew  what  they  were 
buying,  they  seem  to  have  been  glad  to 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE          39 

get  it,  and  they  did  not  pay  him  enough 
for  his  work  to  have  the  slightest  case 
against  him  as  a  purveyor  of  magazine 
material.  His  business  conscience  was 
as  fine  as  that  which  prevailed  in  Amer 
ican  book  and  magazine  trade,  and  one 
rejoices  in  any  device  of  republication 
which  gave  him  opportunity  to  exercise 
his  literary  conscience. 

It  was  not,  however,  Poe's  original 
work  which  brought  him  his  limited 
loaf  of  bread,  but  his  work  at  the 
editor's  desk,  though,  to  be  sure,  his 
editorial  efficiency  depended  on  his  abil 
ity  to  contribute  to  any  department  of  a 
magazine.  He  was  our  first  great  maga- 
zinist.  He  could  furnish  anything  from 
a  catch-subscriber  cryptogram  challenge 
to  the  most  startling  short  story  and  the 
most  provocative  review.  His  skill  in 
the  short  literary  forms  begot  his  critical 
beliefs  in  those  forms,  and  theory  and 
the  peculiarities  of  his  own  powers  as  a 
writer  combined  to  give  him  faith  in  the 


40  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 
vehicle  by  which  short  pieces  of  litera 
ture  are  most  easily  presented  to  the 
public.  He  not  only  recognised  the 
magazine  as  a  convenient  instrument  of 
publication,  but  believed  in  its  func 
tion  to  express  an  editor's  personality 
and  to  realise  and  direct  literary  taste. 
All  his  life  he  dreamed  of  a  magazine  of 
his  own  which  should  be  independent, 
devoted  to  art,  and  fabulously  profit 
able.  Under  his  individual  touch  al 
most  every  magazine  with  which  he  was 
connected  promptly  flourished.  If  he 
sometimes  betrays  his  confidence  in  him 
self  as  a  universal  genius  in  letters,  he  is 
somewhat  justified  by  his  really  wonder 
ful  combination  of  literary  versatility 
and  editorial  skill. 

Poe's  first  success  as  story- writer  came 
just  in  time,  for  in  March,  1834,  Mr. 
Allan  died  intestate,  thus  cutting  off 
Poe's  last  hopes  of  inheriting  money. 
These  hopes,  however,  must  have  been 
slender,  for  there  is  little  doubt  that  he 


EDGAR  ALLAtf  POE          41 

had  made  himself  obnoxious  to  the 
Allans  and  their  Richmond  connection. 
In  the  summer  he  sent  his  tales,  sixteen 
in  number,  to  a  Philadelphia  publishing 
house,  which,  after  keeping  them  for  a 
long  time,  showed  that  it  did  not  agree 
with  the  obiter  dictum  of  the  Saturday 
Visiter  judges  that  the  community  would 
be  gratified  by  the  publication  of  the 
volume.  Poe  spent  the  rest  of  the  year 
and  the  beginning  of  the  next  on  new 
tales,  including  "The  Unparalleled  Ad 
venture  of  one  Hans  Phaal,"  and  on  his 
dramatic  fragment,  ' i  Politian. ' ? 

Kennedy  diverted  him  from  poetic 
tragedy,  and  recommended  him  to  T.  W. 
White,  the  printer-editor  of  the  South 
ern  Literary  Messenger,  just  started  in 
Richmond.  White  engaged  him  pro 
visionally  as  assistant,  and  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life  Poe  had  regular  profita 
ble  occupation.  Depending  on  that,  he 
married  his  cousin,  Virginia  Clemm,  a 
child  of  thirteen.  He  had  lived  with 


42  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 
Mrs.  Clemm  for  some  time,  and  the 
alliance  seems  to  have  been  a  matter 
of  economy,  to  make  the  poor  house 
hold  more  easy  to  shift  and  re-estab 
lish. 

Mrs.  Clemm  and  Virginia  were  tender 
and  loyal  to  him,  and  there  is  abundant 
proof  of  his  devotion  to  them.  This  un 
happy  man,  who  has  been  so  blackly 
drawn,  certainly  spent  a  great  many 
days  at  home,  working  hard.  To  his 
mother-in-law  he  is  more  boyish,  natural, 
and  frank  than  to  any  other  person. 
In  their  terms  of  endearment,  "  Mud- 
die  "  and  "  my  Eddie, "  there  is  a  human 
tone  none  too  common  amid  the  strange 
kinds  of  rhetoric  which  compose  the 
story  of  Poe. 

The  license  for  the  marriage  was  taken 
out  in  September,  1835,  and  there  is 
evidence  of  an  unrecorded  marriage  in 
Baltimore  soon  after.  The  reason  for 
haste  may  be  found  in  the  opposition 
of  Poe's  cousin,  Neilson,  to  Virginia's 


EDGAB  ALLAN  POE  43 
marrying  so  young.  The  recorded  mar 
riage  took  place  in  Bichmond  in  May, 
1836. 

The  family  moved  to  Bichmond  in  the 
fall  of  1835,  and  by  November  Poe  was 
actual  editor  of  the  Messenger.  His  sal 
ary,  with  extra  allowances  for  original 
contributions,  was  small,  but  enough. 
He  had  prospects  of  soon  raising  the  sum 
to  a  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  he  says 
that  his  Bichmond  friends  received  him 
with  open  arms.  Yet  he  was  not  con 
tent.  In  September  he  wrote  to  Ken 
nedy  a  letter  full  of  undefined  despairs, 
to  which  Kennedy  replied  with  the 
good  sense  of  a  Dutch  uncle.  The  mel 
ancholy  letter  was  written  just  before  he 
went  up  to  Baltimore  to  get  his  bride,  and 
the  difficulties  of  that  episode  may  ac 
count  for  his  mood.  Another  explana 
tion  is  found  in  the  letter  which  White 
wrote  to  him  during  his  temporary  ab 
sence  from  Bichmond  :  "If  you  should 
come  to  Bichmond  again,  and  again 


44  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 
should  be  an  assistant  in  my  office,  it 
must  be  expressly  understood  between 
us  that  all  engagements  on  my  part 
would  be  dissolved  the  moment  you  get 
drunk."  At  the  beginning  of  the  year 
he  writes  to  Kennedy  that  he  is  fighting 
the  enemy  manfully.  The  Messenger 
prospered,  and  Poe  published  his  tales  as 
the  year  went  on,  and  republished  many 
of  his  verses. 

At  this  time,  1837,  he  had  not  done 
his  best  work  in  prose,  but  he  had  shown 
the  promise  of  his  best,  and,  with  the 
exception  of  the  detective  story,  he  had 
indicated  the  range  of  his  genius.  In 
fiction  he  had  produced  adventure,  such 
as  "Hans  Phaal,77  characterised  by  a 
Defoe-like  plausibility  of  detail  and  the 
interest  of  a  "Sunday  supplement77 
writer  in  mechanics  and  science ;  ro 
mances  laid  in  a  European  no- man7  s- 
land,  such  as  "The  Assignation77  and 
"Metzengerstein,77  suggested  by  or  bor 
rowed  from  his  reading  in  foreign  litera- 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE          45 

ture  5  and  the  prose  poetry  of  "  Shadow  : 
A  Parable,"  as  remarkable  in  visionary 
prose  as  something  from  Blake  or  De 
Quincey.  No  argument  as  to  literary 
value  is  necessary  to  persuade  any  one 
with  feeling  for  language  who  reads 
the  last  sentence  of  "  Shadow "  that 
he  is  in  the  presence  of  a  writer  who 
— can  write:  "And  then  did  we,  the 
seven,  start  from  our  seats  in  horror 
and  stand  trembling  and  shuddering 
and  aghast,  for  the  tones  in  the  voice  of 
the  shadow  were  not  the  tones  of  any 
one  being,  but  of  a  multitude  of  beings, 
and,  varying  in  their  cadences  from  syl 
lable  to  syllable,  fell  duskily  upon  our 
ears  in  the  well-remembered  and  famil 
iar  accents  of  many  thousand  departed 
friends. "  In  such  pieces  and  in  the 
tales  of  morbid  terror,  "Morella"  and 
"  Berenice, "  we  discover,  I  think,  the 
poet  compelled  by  the  exigencies  of  the 
market  to  turn  into  prose,  with  the 
outward  shape  of  narrative,  visions, 


46          EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

rhythms,  and  verbal  magic  to  which  his 
genius  unhindered  would  have  given 
form  in  verse. 

The  least  successful  kind  of  prose  of 
which  Poe  gave  specimens  in  his  experi 
mental  years  is  the  tale  of  grotesque 
humour.  With  his  sure  tact  for  words  he 
called  it  grotesque  and  not  humorous. 
He  and  some  of  his  friends  thought  it 
was  funny, — this  nightmare  grin.  Poe 
had  sufficient  literary  cleverness  to  simu 
late  something  that  was  not  in  him,  but 
nothing  in  his  legends  of  wonder,  of 
physical  and  mental  terror,  makes  the 
hair  stand  on  end  as  does  his  attempt  to 
write  a  funny  piece.  In  criticism  his 
intellectual  discernment  led  him  some 
times  to  a  kind  of  sharp  wisdom  akin  to 
humour.  But  it  is  impossible  to  think 
of  Irving,  Lincoln,  Dickens,  Mark 
Twain,  and  find  much  left  in  the  word 
"  humour "  which  can  by  any  liter 
ary  or  charitable  function  of  mind  be 
stretched  to  apply  to  the  writings  of 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE  47 
Poe,—  or,  indeed,  to  the  motives  which 
guided  his  conduct  as  a  man. 

His  tales  of  cold  horror  remain  stimu 
lating  for  the  fine  adaptation  of  language 
to  effect, — the  adaptation  which  he  him 
self,  as  every  man  must  preach  doctrines 
to  fit  his  own  achievements,  announced 
as  the  object  of  the  short  story.  But  the 
horror  no  longer  makes  us  sit  up  after 
midnight.  We  have  lived  through  an 
age  which  produced  horror  mightily 
compounded  of  the  facts  of  life, — Dickens 
and  the  Brontes  and  Hardy  and  the 
Eussian  novelists.  Life,  as  one  recog 
nises  it  in  one's  fellows,  Poe  seldom 
touched.  Our  generation  has  adjusted 
itself  comfortably  to  Wuthering  Heights 
and  Bleak  House,  in  which  out  of  spon 
taneous  combustion,  spooks,  and  other 
superstitions  leaps  the  human  fact  to 
grasp  one  by  the  throat ;  and  we  no  longer 
shiver,  as  the  author  intended,  at  the 
posthumous  dentistry  of  "  Berenice. " 
But  Poe  did  develop  a  kind  of  terror 


48  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 
of  mind  which  few  authors  have  dared 
to  approach.  He  looked  within  himself, 
and  gave  us  "William  Wilson,"  "The 
Man  in  the  Crowd/7  the  satanically  true 
"Imp  of  the  Perverse. "  These  and 
others  of  his  maturer  tales  no  change  of 
literary  taste,  no  satiety  of  reading,  can 
outgrow.  And,  though  he  selected  curi 
ous,  remote,  hushed,  and  tiptoe  themes 
to  play  upon  his  instrument,  the  instru 
ment  is  finely  tuned,  and  it  has  a  music 
clear  and  masterly,  which  makes  him 
a  member  of  the  classic  orchestra,  an 
adopted  son  of  French  literature,  an 
essential  pure  note  in  an  age  of  English 
writing  too  prone  to  mistake  mere  power 
for  excellence. 

While  the  public  was  no  doubt  enjoy 
ing  his  stories,  the  literary  world  was 
stirred  by  his  criticism.  In  the  Messenger 
Poe  began  those  attacks  on  mediocrity 
which  won  him  his  dearest  enemies 
and  made  American  literature  bounden 
to  him  forever.  Like  all  fallible  critics, 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE          49 

he  sometimes  hit  the  wrong  head,  he 
was  often  bigoted,  supercilious,  and 
misinformed.  He  was  guilty  of  a  kind 
of  uncritical  chivalry  in  his  treatment 
of  lady  poets.  He  was  also  guilty  of 
currying  favour  with  writers  whose  ma 
terial  help  he  needed,  thereby  sacrific 
ing  the  literary  honesty  and  indepen 
dence  which  he  boasted.  But  he  had  the 
real  gifts  of  criticism,  courage,  discern 
ment,  sensitiveness,  method,  rigidity  of 
standard.  To  learn  his  service,  one  has 
only  to  read  the  names  of  the  persons  he 
criticised,  the  forgotten  favourites  and 
local  heroes  through  whom  his  clear 
brain  and  impoverished  body  had  to 
make  their  daily  way.  Except  for  one 
or  two  established  dignitaries,  Cooper 
and  Irving,  the  persons  who  passed  for 
authors  in  Poe's  time  make  one  unpa 
triotic.  Most  of  them  are  unknown  ex 
cept  for  the  mortuary  inscription  which 
he  carved  upon  their  obscure  graves. 
He  impaled  scores  of  toy  windmills  on 


50  EDGAE  ALLAN  FOB 
his  lance,  and  produced  jealous  conster 
nation  among  pious  and  sentimental 
persons  who,  having  no  other  possible 
employment,  regarded  themselves  as 
"literary."  Because  he  was  unreason 
ably  hostile  to  the  New  England  school, 
we  do  not  always  give  him  credit  for 
recognising  Hawthorne  at  a  time  when 
Hawthorne  called  himself  the  obscurest 
man  of  letters  in  America.  Because  he 
was  foolish  in  accusing  Longfellow  of 
plagiarism,  we  do  not  remember  that 
he  regarded  Longfellow  as  the  first  of 
American  poets,  and  quoted  from  his 
verse  with  approbation,  and  that  the 
seat  of  his  antagonism  to  New  England 
writers  and  Carlyle  was  in  a  just  instinct 
that  sermons  should  not  be  hung  upon 
the  wings  of  visions. 

In  Poe's  time  American  literature  was 
weak  and  strutting,  and  daily  journalism 
in  its  personalities  and  puffs  was  even 
more  contemptible  than  the  modern 
newspaper.  We  know  Poe's  journalis- 


EDGAB  ALLAN  POE          51 

tic  indignities,  because  lie  is  almost  the 
only  one  of  his  age  and  neighbourhood 
whose  complete  works  have  survived, 
for  whose  least  scraps  of  book  reviewing 
the  tangles  of  the  daily  press  have  been 
combed  through  by  editors  and  compil 
ers.  But  he  was  head  and  shoulders  ^ 
above  his  contemporaries  in  his  views  of 
literature,  and  he  did  much  to  awaken 
critical  consciousness.  If  he  paid  the 
penalties  of  dishonesty  and  meanness, 
he  paid  as  heavy  penalties  for  honesty, 
courage,  and  devotion  to  his  craft.  He 
might  have  rendered  as  effective  and 
courageous  service  with  less  arrogance 
and  more  magnanimity,  but  it  is  to  his 
lasting  credit  that  he  remained,  on  the 
whole,  true  to  his  literary  faith  and  in 
dustrious  in  his  efforts  to  establish  high 
standards  of  criticism. 


52          EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

IY. 

In  1836  Poe  wrote  his  longest  story, 
"The  Narrative  of  Arthur  Gordon 
Pym,"  which  appeared  serially  in  the 
Messenger  and  was  published  in  1838  by 
the  Harpers.  The  book  is  still  good 
reading  after  three  generations  of  sea- 
yarns.  It  swings  through  blood  and 
thunder,  strange  seas  and  gloomy  scen 
ery.  It  belongs  not  among  the  hearty 
books  from  Cooper  to  Stevenson,  full  of 
honest  crime  and  yo-heave-ho,  but 
rather  with  the  "Ancient  Mariner"  and 
Mr.  Joseph  Conrad's  Falk,  for  its  draw 
ing  of  the  intellectual  horrors  of  can 
nibalism  and  sea  loneliness. 

Poe  left  the  Messenger  in  January, 
1837,  apparently  on  good  terms  with 
White.  This  is  the  first  of  several  unac 
countable  departures  on  the  part  of  Poe 
from  positions  that  gave  him  a  living. 
Kennedy's  explanation  answers  for  all. 
"He  was  irregular,  eccentric,  andqueru- 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE          53 

lous,  and  soon  gave  up  his  place."  He 
went  with  his  family  to  Baltimore, 
Philadelphia,  and  finally  to  New  York, 
where  Mrs.  Clemm  took  boarders  to 
keep  the  household  alive.  Poe  failed  to 
establish  himself  in  New  York,  and  in 
the  summer  of  1838  settled  in  Philadel 
phia.  To  this  period  belong  the  poem 
"The  Haunted  Palace,"  "Silence,"  a 
prose  poem  of  great  beauty,  and  a  piece 
of  pot-boiling  at  which  his  fingers  were 
scorched.  He  was  selected  by  the  pub 
lishers  and  apparently  by  the  author 
of  a  book  on  conchology  to  father  The 
Conchologisf  s  First  Book.  It  is  hard  to 
see  just  what  harm  he  did  to  the 
learned  authorities  on  whom  he  levied 
for  information  about  a  subject  of  which 
he  was  obviously  ignorant.  If  he  had 
not  been  so  diligent  in  his  quest  for 
plagiarism  in  others,  he  probably  would 
not  have  been  censured  for  his  moral  in 
direction  in  putting  his  name  to  a  book 
which  he  could  not  have  written. 


54          EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

In  1839  he  became  contributor  to 
Burton*  s  Gentleman's  Magazine,  pub- 
lished  in  Philadelphia,  and  in  July  was 
announced  as  associate  editor.  His  con 
tributions  to  this  magazine  gave  it  pros 
perity,  and  so  increased  his  reputation 
that  the  hitherto  doubtful  publishers 
ventured  to  print  the  best  book  of 
short  stories  that  America  had  produced. 
Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and  Arabesque 
appeared  in  two  volumes  at  the  end  of 
1839  or  the  beginning  of  1840.  These 
volumes  contain  several  of  Poe's  master 
pieces,—  "  The  Fall  of  the  House  of 
Usher, "  "  William  Wilson, »  "  Shadow,  >  > 
" Silence,"  and  "Ligeia."  As  Poe 
matured,  his  tales  of  horror  became  less 
physical,  more  intellectual,  and  dealt 
with  the  mysteries  of  conscience,  will, 
life  after  death.  He  had  a  superstitious 
rather  than  a  scientific  interest  in  the 
shadowy  problems  of  psychology,  me 
tempsychosis,  the  nature  of  personality, 
hypnotism,  and  the  rest.  In  this  he  is 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE  55 
like  Hawthorne.  One  difference  is  that 
Poe  fetches  the  shadows  out  into  the 
open  analysis  of  his  brilliant,  confident 
style,  whereas  Hawthorne  leaves  them 
dim,  soft,  in  the  distances  of  religious 
and  poetic  wonder.  Moreover,  the 
spectres  in  whom  Hawthorne  embodies 
mesmeric  suggestions,  his  victims  of  con 
science,  the  spooks  that  appear  and 
disappear  amid  allegorical  portents,  now 
and  again  step  forward  and  speak  with 
human  voices.  Poe  never  contrived 
a  human  being :  the  conversations  of 
his  characters  are  but  the  vehicles  of 
expository  ideas.  Compared  to  the 
dramatically  real  double  person,  Jekyll- 
Hyde,  William  Wilson  is  a  ghost. 
"Morella,"  " Berenice,7'  "Ligeia,"  are 
but  the  transparent  images  of  revery 
laid  against  the  plane  surface  of  a 
mathematical  plan.  When  Poe  reached 
out  for  a  human  being,  one  who  might 
come  ready-made  from  the  byways  of 
life  into  the  particular  course  he  was 


56  EDGAE  ALLAK  FOB 
laying  out  for  his  story,  he  pressed 
human  truth  out  of  the  figure  after 
a  minute  of  handling.  For  an  instance, 
the  more  important  because  it  concerns 
a  minor  character  who  had  nothing  un 
natural  to  do  in  the  interests  of  the 
story,  "  The  Gold  Bug,"  written  three 
years  later,  contains  a  negro  servant. 
Foe  had  lived  at  the  South  and  knew 
negroes,  but  the  talk  of  Jupiter  is 
more  remote  from  negro  talk  than  the 
utmost  devices  of  black- faced  minstrelsy. 
Foe  found  his  material  in  himself  and  in 
his  reading  rather  than  in  his  fellows. 
The  first  person  in  one  of  the  tales  says: 
"  Feelings  with  me  had  never  been  of 
the  heart,  and  my  passions  always  were 
of  the  mind." 

Foe's  association  with  Burton  lasted 
until  the  summer  of  1840,  when  Foe  an 
nounced  the  magazine  which  he  always 
hoped  to  found  and  never  did.  Ferhaps 
Burton  objected  to  a  plan  that  meant  a 
loss  to  the  Gentleman's  Magazine,  and 


EDGAB  ALLAX  POE  57 
it  may  be  that  Poe,  in  new  hope  of  in 
dependence,  became  a  troublesome  em 
ployee  and  made  improper  use  of  Bur 
ton's  subscription  lists.  Burton  circu 
lated  abusive  reports  of  Poe's  habits,  but 
wished  for  business  reasons  to  get  him 
back  on  the  magazine.  Poe  called  Bur 
ton  a  scoundrel,  and  Poe's  scoundrels 
were  often  persons  he  had  offended. 
When  in  1841  Graham  took  the  Gentle 
man's  Magazine  over,  Burton  stipulated 
that  his  young  editor  was  to  be  taken 
care  of. 

In  the  magazine  for  June  appeared 
the  last  instalment  of  "The  Journal  of 
Julius  Bodman,"  in  which  Poe  tried  to 
do  with  land  adventure  what  he  had 
done  with  sea  adventure  in  the  story  of 
Pym.  It  was  never  brought  to  comple 
tion  on  account  of  Poe's  break  with  the 
magazine  ;  but  it  is  interesting  in  that 
it  was  not  remembered  as  Poe's  work 
until  in  1880  the  English  biographer, 
Ingram,  discovered  it  in  the  files  of  Bur- 


58          EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

tori's,  and  it  illustrates  the  curious  Eliza 
bethan  vagabondage  of  Poe7s  writings, 
unusual  in  modern  literature.  No  fur 
ther  work  of  his  is  identified  until  the 
December  number,  in  which  appeared 
"The  Man  of  the  Crowd,77  a  parable  of 
conscience.  Poe  abandoned  for  the  time 
his  plan  for  a  magazine  of  his  own,  and 
entered  upon  a  period  of  relatively  pros 
perous  writing  and  editing  for  the  mag 
azine  which  George  Graham  made  out 
of  Burton's  and  another.  He  found  time 
for  contributions  to  other  magazines, 
and  was  for  two  years  industrious  and 
fairly  well  off  under  the  friendly  Gra 
ham. 

His  chief  intellectual  development  in 
this  time  was  his  new  turn  for  analysis  and 
detection.  In  May,  1841,  he  published 
in  another  magazine  of  Graham7  s  a  con 
struction,  from  the  first  chapters  which 
had  recently  appeared,  of  the  plot  of 
Barndby  Rudge.  Dickens  is  said  to 
have  asked  if  Poe  was  the  devil.  He 


EDGAE   ALLAN  POE          59 

was  devilish  only  in  knowing  how  other 
men's  minds  must  work  under  given 
conditions;  and  the  conjuror's  tricks  of 
another  plot-maker  did  not  baffle  him. 
He  himself  delighted  to  explain  care 
fully  how  the  conjuror  performs,  and 
after  the  explanation  to  startle  the 
audience  more  than  ever.  He  was  busy 
about  this  time  with  his  challenge  to  the 
world  to  send  him  cryptograms  which 
he  could  not  solve.  He  mastered  all 
that  came,  and  there  is  a  curious  impli 
cation  in  the  terms  of  his  challenge  that 
any  one  who  can  use  his  brain  can  de 
cipher  a  cryptogram  that  any  other 
brain  can  conceive,  but  that  there  is  no 
one  in  the  world  but  Poe  who  can  use 
his  brain.  In  this  he  was  relatively 
right.  Poe  inevitably  discovered  that, 
compared  with  his  own,  the  mental  proc 
esses  of  humanity  are  feeble  operations, 
and  he  loved  to  set  the  silly  mouth  of  the 
world  agape.  But  he  laid  up  bitterness 
for  himself  in  the  unavoidable  reflection 


60          EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

that  simpletons  and  dullards  get  on  very 
well  in  the  world,  that  they  like  each 
other  and  prosper,  while  he  of  the  supe 
rior  brain  is  marked  for  unsuccess  and 
galling  friction  with  the  sluggard  proc 
esses  of  common  life. 

His  work  as  puzzle  editor  was  tiring, 
and  the  records  of  it  are  of  no  literary 
value  except  to  reveal  Poe's  inexhaust 
ible  brain  power.  In  April  appeared 
the  first  of  his  detective  stories,  "The 
Murders  of  the  Eue  Morgue, "  which 
fixed  at  the  very  inception  of  the  form 
an  ultimate  standard  of  excellence. 
These  detective  stories  are  the  emer 
gence  of  Poe's  intellect  from  confusing 
practical  conditions.  The  man  delighted 
to  think,  and  in  this  period  of  compara 
tive  ease  he  indulged  in  the  exercise  of 
ratiocination.  ' i  The  Murders  of  the  Eue 
Morgue 7 '  is  connected  in  its  physical 
horror  with  his  other  weird  tales  5  but 
in  "The  Purloined  Letter "  he  came  to 
the  purest  example  of  the  tale  of  reason, 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE          61 

for  this,  without  sensational  terror,  holds 
the  interest  in  the  question  how  a 
mind  thinks  and  how  another  mind 
should  set  to  work  to  guess  at  the  prob 
able  plottings  of  the  first.  "The  Mys 
tery  of  Marie  Roget "  is  the  boldest  and 
most  spectacular  of  the  detective  stories. 
In  others,  as  Poe  himself  was  the  first  to 
point  out,  the  author  invents  both  solu 
tion  and  problem,  or  follows  a  story  of 
life  which  has  been  brought  to  conclu 
sion.  In  " Marie  Eoget"  Poe  undertook 
to  solve  by  thinly  disguised  parallel 
a  murder  plot  which  was  being  un 
folded  in  contemporaneous  newspapers, 
and  which  his  conclusion  forestalled 
in  the  ultimate  development  of  the 
event. 

Poe  seems  to  have  tried  all  the  direc 
tions  which  the  detective  story  will 
take,  except  one  which  he  was  temper 
amentally  unable  to  follow.  In  later 
writers  the  detective  story  has  merged 
with  the  novel  of  human  life,  in  which 


62  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 
our  interests  are  engaged  by  other 
things  than  the  sheer  process  of  detec 
tion.  To  take  a  current  example,  the 
world  can  find  human  interest  in  the 
death  and  the  love  affairs  and  the  pallid 
addiction  to  cocaine  of  Mr.  Sherlock 
Holmes.  Poe's  persons,  out  of  plot,  are 
out  of  mind. 

Poe  added  to  his  tales  of  horror  "  The 
Pit  and  the  Pendulum7'  and  "The 
Black  Cat,"  and  in  "The  Masque  of  the 
Bed  Death"  revealed  his  luxurious 
sense  of  color.  This  sense  in  his  crude 
age  and  surroundings  was  easily  per 
verted  to  a  kind  of  riot  in  plush  and 
tinsel  magnificence  which  shows  not  so 
much  his  lack  of  taste  as  the  yearnings 
of  an  impoverished  man  for  warmth  and 
splendour.  He  also  wrote  for  Graham's 
some  of  his  soundest  criticisms,  on  Haw 
thorne,  Longfellow,  Dickens,  Bulwer, 
Goldsmith,  John  Wilson,  Macaulay, 
Lever,  Marryat. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  in  a  year  the  sub- 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE  63 
scribers  to  the  magazine  increased  from 
eight  thousand  to  forty  thousand.  But 
Poe  was  still  restless.  In  1841  he  tried 
unsuccessfully  to  get  a  sinecure  at  "Wash 
ington, — a  course  suggested  to  him  by  a 
friend.  He  still  dreamed  of  an  inde 
pendent  magazine.  He  hailed  Lowell's 
short-lived  Pioneer,  and  began  with 
Lowell  the  most  disinterested  literary 
acquaintance  which  graces  his  corre 
spondence.  When  Lowell7  s  eyes  failed 
and  his  magazine  fell  into  debt  and  died, 
Poe  wrote  to  him :  "  As  for  the  few  dollars 
you  owe  me,  give  yourself  not  one 
moment's  concern  about  them."  The 
decease  of  the  Pioneer,  said  Poe,  would 
be  a  blow  to  the  cause  of  Pure  Taste. 

For  all  Poe's  increasing  reputation  he 
could  not  induce  the  publishers  to  un 
dertake  a  new  edition  of  those  tales 
which  modern  publishers  in  every  coun 
try  reprint  many  times.  And  it  was  at 
this  period  that  tragedy,  which  the  ar 
tist  had  pursued  with  haunting  specula- 


64          EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

tion,  entered  the  house  of  the  man. 
Virginia  ruptured  a  blood-vessel,  and 
for  several  years  lived  on  the  verge  of 
death.  Poe  suffered  actual  or  imagina 
tive  sorrow  for  her  death  a  dozen  times 
before  she  was  finally  taken,  and  under 
the  strain  his  will  showed  all  its  weak 
nesses.  One  may  say  that  for  ten  years 
his  fight  upward  had  been  not  unsuc 
cessful,  and  from  now  on  he  showed 
more  and  more  his  infirmities  of  charac 
ter  and  body.  The  artistic  record  of 
his  sorrow  may  be  found  in  the  story 
of  Eleanora's  death  in  "The  Valley  of 
the  Many  Colored  Grass."  The  som 
bre  beauty  and  melancholy  rhythm  of 
the  prose  bring  us  nearer  than  most  of 
Poe's  writings  to  the  affectionate  in 
terests  of  the  heart.  It  was  written 
before  Virginia's  death,  and  was  pub 
lished  in  1842.  The  analysis  of  the 
dreamer's  mind  is  in  some  degree  auto 
biographic,  and  the  opening  sentence  of 
the  narrative  is  close  to  fact:  "She 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE  65 
whom  I  loved  in  youth  and  of  whom  I 
now  pen  calmly  and  distinctly  these  re 
miniscences  was  the  sole  daughter  of 
the  only  sister  of  my  mother,  long  de 
parted.  " 

In  April,  1842,  Poe  ceased  to  be  edi 
tor  of  Graham's.  The  story  goes  that, 
while  Poe  was  away  for  a  short  time, 
Graham  put  in  his  place  the  Eev.  Dr. 
Eufus  W.  Griswold.  Poe,  coming  back, 
found  Griswold  in  his  chair,  waited  not 
for  explanation,  but  left  the  office  for 
ever.  This  is  said  to  be  Grahamjs  ac 
count,  given  thirty  years  later.  Graham 
remained  faithful  to  Poe,  and  wrote  one 
of  the  warmest  defences  of  him. 

This  Eev.  Mr.  Griswold  has  an  impor 
tant  place  in  Poe's  life  and  in  his 
"  Lives. "  The  nub  of  the  matter  is 
that  biography  is  usually  born  in  eulogy. 
A  man  dies,  friends  and  family  issue  the 
long  funeral  sermon  called  the  official 
life  and  letters.  Later  biographers  ex 
amine,  criticise,  and  finally  shave  the 


66  EDGAB  ALLAN  POE 
sermon  down  to  facts,  from  which  each 
biographer  constructs  a  new  essay  in  in 
terpretation.  It  was  Poe's  lot  to  have, 
by  his  own  appointment,  an  official  bio 
grapher  who  by  training  and  temper  was 
incapable  of  understanding  him  in  a  large 
way,  but  who  had  most  of  the  facts  in 
document.  Griswold  was  a  Baptist  min 
ister  turned  litterateur,  and  was  a  tire 
less  compiler  of  anthologies  which  might 
have  been  called  "  Who's  Who  in  Liter 
ature."  Poe,  like  many  other  true 
poets,  was  a  zealous  advertiser  of  his  lit 
erary  wares,  and  kept  on  good  terms 
with  Griswold  in  order  to  get  a  place  in 
Griswold' s  popular  compendiums  of 
Parnassus.  He  furnished  Griswold 
with  a  mendacious  biographical  sketch, 
and  he  pretends  that  Griswold  asked 
him  to  review  the  book  and  offered  to 
" place"  the  review,  and  that  this  was, 
of  course,  a  bribe  from  Griswold  for  a 
puff.  In  a  lecture  Poe  riddled  Gris 
wold' s  book,  and  probably  expressed  his 


EDGAB  ALLAN  POE          67 

real  opinion  of  the  compiler  and  of  most 
mounters  of  Pegasus  in  the  American 
riding  school  exhibit  of  amateur  poets. 
The  reports  of  the  lecture  angered  Gris 
wold,  but  Poe  deprecated  the  severity  of 
the  lecture,  and  was  not  above  borrow 
ing  five  dollars  from  the  man  he  of 
fended.  When  Griswold  turned  to  his 
next  compilation,  "The  Prose  Writers 
of  America, "  Poe,  desirous  to  appear  in 
that,  wrote  apologetically  to  Griswold 
and  made  light  of  having  spoken  ill  of 
him.  To  the  end  he  seems  to  have 
thought  that  he  was  on  good  terms  with 
Griswold,  and  so  made  him  his  literary 
executor. 

Immediately  upon  Poe's  death  Gris 
wold  took  the  course  which  has  given 
both  a  black  reputation.  He  printed  a 
powerful  article  in  the  New  York  Trib 
une,  which  underrates  Poe's  work,  if  it 
does  not  overrate  his  vices.  Aside  from 
the  suspicious  anonymity  of  the  article, 
it  was  unfriendly  and  ill-advised  at  the 


68  EDGAE   ALLAN  POE 

moment  when  Poe  had  slipped  out  of 
a  clouded  and  unhappy  life,  leaving  a 
multitude  of  enemies.  It  would  have 
been  better  had  the  key  to  Poe's  posthu 
mous  reputation  been  struck  at  the  be 
ginning  in  a  different  manner  and  by  a 
man  of  larger  understanding.  Friends 
rushed  to  Poe's  defence,  not  always  ef 
fectual  and  too  often  giving  prominence 
by  their  denials  to  inessentials.  Gris- 
wold  did  not  learn  his  lesson  from  the 
trouble  which  the  Tribune  article  caused, 
but  prefixed  to  the  third  volume  of 
Poe's  works  the  "Memoir,"  which  was 
afterward  suppressed.  It  is  no  longer 
acceptable  as  a  view  of  Poe.  It  is  un 
sympathetic.  The  author  is  engaged  in 
justifying  himself  and  not  in  finding  out 
what  in  Poe's  work  and  life  really  mat 
tered  to  make  a  biography  of  him  worth 
writing  at  all.  Where  a  crack  shows  in 
Poe's  character,  Griswold  inserts  a  keen 
instrument,  and  drives  it  in  with  the 
weight  of  damning  evidence  of  which  he 


EDGAE  ALLAtf  POE  69 
owned  a  large  collection.  His  "  Me 
moir  "  is  not  the  monstrosity  of  slander 
which  it  has  been  called,  and  as  a  collec 
tion  of  testimony  has  not,  as  a  whole, 
been  invalidated.  There  was  plenty  of 
substantial  documentary  relic  to  show  to 
the  satisfaction  of  a  person  like  Griswold 
that  Poe's  character  was  compounded  of 
poor  stuff.  Griswold  wrote  to  Mrs. 
Whitman  just  after  the  Tribune  article  : 
"I  was  not  his  [Poe's]  friend,  nor  was  he 
mine.  ...  I  cannot  refrain  from  beg 
ging  you  to  be  careful  what  you  say  or 
write  to  Mrs.  Clemm,  who  is  not  your 
friend,  nor  anybody's  friend,  and  who 
has  no  element  of  goodness  or  kindness 
in  her  nature,  but  whose  heart  and  un 
derstanding  are  full  of  malice  and  wick 
edness.  "  Mrs.  Clemm  did  not  deserve  to 
be  thus  undermined  along  with  her  son- 
in-law,  to  whom  she  was  in  his  life  and 
his  death  unfailingly  loyal. 

Griswold  did    harm  because  the  re 
action  against  him  has  added  confusions. 


70  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 
The  pendulum  has  swung  back  and 
forth,  and,  in  spite  of  Mr.  George  E. 
Woodberry's  attempt  more  than  twenty 
years  ago  to  stop  it  on  centre,  it  con 
tinues  to  swing  up  to  the  present  day. 

Poe  says  in  one  of  his  letters  that 
Graham  made  him  a  good  offer  to 
return  to  the  magazine.  It  is  not  likely 
that  White  or  Burton  or  Graham  ever 
willingly  gave  up  Poe's  services.  Diffi 
cult  as  he  was  to  get  along  with,  he  was 
the  best  editor  in  the  country  and  put 
money  in  the  pockets  of  his  employers. 
Perhaps  the  reason  he  did  not  return  to 
Graham,  who  remained  friendly  to  him, 
is  that  he  still  had  hopes  of  getting 
a  clerkship  in  Washington  and  was  out 
again  with  a  prospectus  of  his  will-o'- 
the-wisp  magazine.  This  time  he  went 
so  far  as  to  find  a  partner  and  make 
a  contract  with  Darley  for  illustrations. 
The  scheme  came  to  naught,  and  he  did 
not  get  the  appointment  to  the  sinecure 
under  the  government.  When  he  went 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE          71 

to  Washington  to  see  about  it,  he  fell  by 
the  wayside  and  caused  his  friends  em- 
barrasment  and  anxiety.  An  attempt 
to  issue  his  prose  romances  in  a  series  of 
volumes  failed  with  the  first  number. 
His  only  good  luck  about  this  time  was 
to  win  a  hundred  dollars  for  "  The  Gold 
Bug,7'  which  was  published  in  the 
Philadelphia  Dollar  Newspaper  in  June, 
1843.  The  other  publications  of  this 
year  include  "The  Conqueror  Worm," 
"Lenore,"  and  the  stories  "The  Tell 
tale  Heart"  and  "The  Black  Cat,"— 
gloomy  parables  on  the  theme  that 
murder  will  out.  Toward  the  end  of 
the  year  he  gave  his  lecture  on  poetry, 
which  contained  the  substance  of  the 
"Notes  on  English  Verse"  and  the 
offensive  remarks,  whatever  they  were, 
about  Griswold. 

The  essay  on  "Mr.  Griswold  and  the 
Poets,"  as  it  remains  in  Poe's  work, 
will  repay  the  reading  of  it  to  which 
one  is  led  by  its  peculiar  biographical 


72  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 
interest.  It  is  cool,  discerning,  and  just, 
and  it  shows  the  larger  philosophical 
principles  with  which  Poe  surrounded 
his  remarks  about  now  forgotten  books. 
In  an  age  when  many  things  are  being 
written  about  America,  the  opening 
paragraphs  of  Poe's  essay  are  fresh  after 
sixty  years.  The  first  tells  the  truth 
about  Poe's  mind,  the  second  the  truth 
about  American  literature,  although  the 
faith  which  Poe  then  expressed  has  been 
delayed  in  fulfilment.  The  passage 
serves,  too,  to  show  the  point,  balance, 
and  ease  of  Poe's  writing. 

"That  we  are  not  a  poetical  people 
has  been  asserted  so  often  and  so 
roundly,  both  at  home  and  abroad,  that 
the  slander,  through  mere  dint  of  repeti 
tion,  has  come  to  be  received  as  truth. 
Yet  nothing  can  be  farther  removed 
from  it.  The  mistake  is  but  a  portion, 
or  corollary,  of  the  old  dogma,  that  the 
calculating  faculties  are  at  war  with  the 
ideal ;  while,  in  fact,  it  may  be  demon- 


EDGAB  ALLAN  POE          73 

strated  that  the  two  divisions  of  mental 
power  are  never  to  be  found  in  perfection 
apart.  The  highest  order  of  the  imagi 
native  intellect  is  always  pre-eminently 
mathematical ;  and  the  converse. 

"The  idiosyncrasy  of  our  political 
position  has  stimulated  into  early  action 
whatever  practical  talent  we  possessed. 
Even  in  our  national  infancy  we 
evinced  a  degree  of  utilitarian  ability 
which  put  to  shame  the  mature  skill  of 
our  forefathers.  While  yet  in  leading- 
strings,  we  proved  ourselves  adepts  in  all 
the  arts  and  sciences  which  promote  the 
comfort  of  the  animal  man.  But  the 
arena  of  exertion,  and  of  consequent 
distinction,  into  which  our  first  and 
most  obvious  wants  impelled  us  has 
been  regarded  as  the  field  of  our 
deliberate  choice.  Our  necessities  have 
been  mistaken  for  our  propensities. 
Having  been  forced  to  make  railroads, 
it  has  been  deemed  impossible  that  we 
should  make  verse.  Because  it  suited 


74          EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

us  to  construct  an  engine  in  the  first 
instance,  it  has  been  denied  that  we 
could  compose  an  epic  in  the  second. 
Because  we  were  not  Homers  in  the 
beginning,  it  has  been  somewhat  too 
rashly  taken  for  granted  that  we  shall 
be  all  Jeremy  Benthams  to  the  end. 

"But  this  is  the  purest  insanity. 
The  principles  of  the  poetic  sentiment 
lie  deep  within  the  immortal  nature  of 
man,  and  have  little  necessary  reference 
to  the  worldly  circumstances  which  sur 
round  him.  The  poet  of  Arcady  is,  in 
Kamschatka,  the  poet  still.  The  self 
same  Saxon  current  animates  the  British 
and  the  American  heart;  nor  can  any 
social  or  political  or  moral  or  physical 
conditions  do  more  than  momentarily 
repress  the  impulses  which  glow  in  our 
own  bosoms  as  fervently  as  in  those  of 
our  progenitors." 

Poe  continued  to  be  in  the  last  years 
of  his  life  a  privileged  contributor  to 
magazines,  in  that  he  was  allowed  to 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE          75 

express  his  opinions  freely.  His  intel 
lectual  independence  was  not  thwarted 
by  editorial  policies,  and  he  was  rather 
encouraged  than  discouraged  to  speak 
out  his  mind.  His  quarrel,  aside  from 
questions  of  money,  seems  not  to  have 
been  so  much  resentment  for  what  the 
editors  did  not  accept  from  him  as  a 
more  disinterested  contempt  for  what 
they  accepted  from  others.  It  was  at 
this  period  that  his  dream  of  an  inde 
pendent  magazine  assumed  its  most 
magnificent  and  impossible  form.  He 
wrote  to  Lowell,  proposing  that  the 
dozen  ilite  of  our  men  of  letters  should 
form  a  company  to  make  the  irresistible 
magazine,  which  should  mount  in  two 
years  to  a  hundred  thousand  copies, 
make  them  all  rich,  and  reform  literary 
taste.  There  is  a  naive  enthusiasm  in 
this  oldish  young  man  for  a  form  of  pub 
lication  which  has  persistently  refused  to 
do  much  for  the  cause  of  pure  letters, 
except  to  pay  the  butchers7  bills  of 


76  EDGAR  ALLAN  FOB 
authors  while  they  devote  their  off-time 
to  productions  not  suited  to  the  maga 
zines.  In  Poe's  case  the  facts  are  in 
verted  :  his  best  productions  were  suited 
to  the  magazines,  but  they  did  not  pay 
his  butcher's  bills. 

Poe's  letter  to  Lowell  about  the  maga 
zine  which  should  be  independent,  sin 
cere,  and  original,  was  written  in  March, 
1844.     The   next  month  he  moved  to 
New  York,    and   attached    himself   to 
a    metropolitan    press,    less    dignified, 
less  literary  in   its   traditions  than  the 
press    of    Philadelphia.      In    his    first 
week  in  New  York  he  perpetrated  his 
"  Balloon  Hoax"  through  the  columns  of 
the  New  York  Sun.     Poe's  account,  in 
a  convincing   reportorial  style,    of  the 
passage  of  a  balloon  from  England  to 
America  was  successful  in  fooling  many 
persons.    The  only  humour  in  this  sort 
of  thing  is  the  Swift-like  contempt,   of 
which  Poe  had  a  touch,  for  the  gullibility 
of  man. 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE  77 
In  New  York  Poe  had  every  kind 
of  success  but  that  to  which  as  an  indus 
trious  writer  he  was  most  entitled, — rea 
sonable  prosperity.  A  letter  to  Lowell 
about  the  biographical  sketch  of  Poe 
which  Lowell  was  to  furnish  to  Graham's 
Magazine  shows  that  six  of  Poe's  tales 
were  in  the  hands  of  publishers,  unpaid 
for.  During  this  year  Poe  was  ill,  and 
his  wife's  illness  was  no  doubt  aggravated 
by  their  poverty.  In  the  fall  he  found 
employment  on  the  Evening  Mirror, 
edited  by  K  P.  Willis. 

Willis  says  that  Poe  did  steadily  and 
patiently  all  kinds  of  editorial  work  from, 
mechanical  paragraphing  to  literary  re 
views.  One  of  his  reviews  is  that  of 
Miss  Barrett  (Mrs.  Browning).  Mrs. 
Browning  testified  to  Poe's  conscientious 
workmanship  by  saying,  "The  reviewer 
has  so  obviously  and  thoroughly  read 
my  poems  as  to  be  a  wonder  among 
critics.77 

At  the  beginning  of  1845  Poe  pub- 


78  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 
lished  "The  Baven,"  which  made  a 
sensation  in  America  and  later  in  Eng 
land  and  France.  "The  Baven"  and 
"Annabel  Lee"  have  been  abundantly 
parodied.  In  a  way  this  is  a  test  of  their 
distinction.  "No  one  with  serious  or 
mocking  intention  can  try  these  rhythms 
without  reminding  the  whole  English- 
speaking  race  of  Poe.  Personally,  I  can 
not  read  "The  Baven"  without  more 
than  ever  liking  Calverley,  and  I  enjoy 
the  spectacle  of  one  English  magazine 
ascribing  to  Poe  Mr.  James  Whitcomb 
Biley's  "Leonainie,"  about  the  time 
that  another  English  magazine  asks  super 
ciliously,  "Who  is  Biley?"  But  Poe's 
rhythms  and  word  arrangements  have 
stamped  themselves  forever  upon  the  ear 
of  his  race ;  they  have  marked  out  for 
him  a  little  realm  of  wonder  verse  where 
no  other  poet  can  enter  without  a  chal 
lenge  from  the  original  occupant.  The 
same  persons  will  be  haunted  by  "The 
Baven"  and  all  Poe's  best  poems  who 


EDGAR  ALLAN  POE          79 

respond  to  the  divine  insanities  of  Blake, 
the  sometimes  hollow  enchantments  of 
Mr.  Swinburne,  and  who  are  fain  to 
worship  the  painted  lady  leaning  out 
from  Bossetti's  painted  heaven.  For  the 
rest,  as  Neal  said,  "Why  waste  words 
upon  them?" 

Poe  tempted  his  new  popularity  by 
lecturing.  His  subject  was  poetry.  He  ^ 
was  developing  those  theories  of  criti 
cism  and  verse  structure  which  are  valu 
able  because  an  artist's  comment  on  his 
craft  is  always  valuable,  and  also  because 
Poe's  ideas  on  verse  are  true  and  complete. 
Many  of  his  scientific  and  philosophi 
cal  ideas  have  been  rendered  obsolete, 
like  many  of  the  dearest  prose  convic 
tions  of  poets.  But  most  essays  on  the 
science  of  prosody  have  been  put  forth 
by  grammarians  who  could  not  make  a 
line  of  verse,  by  scholars  in  Greek  and 
Latin  who  could  not  read  Horace  out 
loud  and  make  him  sound  like  a  poet. 
Poe  once  for  all  set  down  the  aural  facts 


80  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 
of  prosody,  and  phrased  the  truth  that 
poetry  is  simply,  line  for  line,  beautiful 
sounds  which  convey  interesting  ideas. 
When  his  dictum  that  a  long  poem  is  a 
contradiction  of  terms  is  brought  up 
against  the  schemes  of  other  philosophic 
critics  whereby  the  epic  is  the  great 
thing  because  of  its  religious  scope,  and 
"Hamlet,77  as  a  whole,  is  greater  than  its 
parts,  we  find  that  as  a  matter  of  ex 
perience  we  like  epics  for  their  lovely 
passages.  " Hamlet,77  as  a  whole,  is  a 
melodrama,  but  in  pieces  is  a  series  of 
fine  poems,  and  has  so  been  remem 
bered  and  enjoyed  by  readers  of  poetry. 
Whether  Poe's  ideas  be  true  or  not,  they 
are  beautifully  and  convincingly  phrased. 
They  were  most  necessary  in  an  age 
of  tuneless  bards,  of  metrical  religiosity 
which  passed  for  having  the  spirit  of 
poetry  because  it  praised  God. 

The  Evening  Mirror  did  not  satisfy 
Poe.  Perhaps,  as  Briggs  wrote  to  Low 
ell,  "Willis  was  too  Willisy77  for  Poe, 


EDGAR  ALLAK  POE          81 

though  it  is  one  of  the  ironies  of  life 
that  Willis  was  never  more  Willisy 
than  in  his  defence  and  eulogy  of 
Poe. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  year  1845 
Briggs  and  Briscoe  had  founded  the 
Broadway  Journal,  and  Poe  contributed 
to  it.  In  March  he  became  a  sort  of  co- 
editor.  Briggs  liked  Poe  less  and  less 
as  time  went  on,  and  his  letters  to  Low 
ell  swing  from  doubt  of  Griswold's 
" shocking  stories"  to  admiration  of 
Poe,  then  to  dislike,  then  to  violent 
animosity. 

Poe's  good  work  at  this  time  includes 
"The  Imp  of  the  Perverse,77  the  nearest 
of  all  Poe?s  work  to  something  like  a 
discovery  in  human  nature,  wonder 
ful  for  its  clear  expression  of  shadowy 
things  that  every  one  else  has  dimly  felt 
and  no  one  else  been  able  to  say.  To 
this  year  belongs  also  "  The  Facts  in  the 
Case  of  M.  Valdemar."  This  revolting 
and  fascinating  tale  has  historical  in- 


82  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 
terest  in  that  it  became  matter  of  solemn 
discussion  among  men  of  scientific  pre 
tensions  and  excited  the  shivering, 
whimsical  admiration  of  Mrs.  Brown 
ing.  Poe  paid  tribute  to  her  by  dedi 
cating  to  her  his  "Raven"  volume  and 
by  putting  her  above  all  her  contempo 
raries  except  Tennyson.  In  return  she 
left  in  a  brief  letter  one  of  the  few  utter 
ances  of  great  writers,  during  Poe's  life, 
which  seem  to  modern  taste  to  assess  him 
justly. 

As  for  the  scientific  interest  of  "M. 
Valdemar,"  let  us  recall  that  the  whole 
weight  of  science  and  philosophy  and 
scholarship  has  been  gravely  massed  to 
prove  that  Poe  was  no  man  of  science, 
no  philosopher,  no  scholar.  Yet  he 
made  whatever  in  his  time  passed  for 
science  look  very  silly  by  his  baitings  of 
its  credulity.  He  had  no  difficulty  in 
deceiving  scholarship  on  its  own  grounds 
until  after  forty  years  it  found  him 
out.  As  for  philosophy,  he  produced 


EDGAK  ALLAN  POE  83 
" Eureka,"  of  which  I  shall  say  more 
presently. 

In  June  Briggs  prepared  "to  haul 
down  Poe's  name77  from  the  Broadway 
Journal.  He  accuses  Poe  of  having 
been  on  a  spree.  Poe  seems,  however, 
to  have  kept  his  head  well  enough:  he 
played  the  other  partner,  Briscoe,  against 
Briggs,  kept  his  " third  interest"  until 
autumn,  and  then  became  sole  proprie 
tor.  Now,  if  ever,  he  could  prove  what 
was  in  his  dreams  of  independent  jour 
nalism, —  and  how  much  dreams  depend 
on  dollars. 

During  the  year  Wiley  &  Putnam 
published  a  volume  of  selections  from 
Poe's  tales.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  dur 
ing  Poe's  life  his  books  did  not  sell  well. 
The  reason  may  be  that  his  repeated 
publication  of  his  poems  and  stories  in 
the  magazines  satisfied  the  demand.  It 
is  difficult  now  to  know  just  what  the 
public  did  like  him  for.  The  reading 
public  does  not  directly  record  itself. 


84  EDGAE  ALLAN"  POE 
Literary  persons  make  the  records,  and 
literary  persons  are  likely  to  be  mis 
taken.  Some  writers  think  he  was  in 
his  life  more  celebrated  as  critic  than  as 
poet  or  romancer.  There  was,  true,  a 
spice  even  in  his  minor  criticisms  which 
preserves  the  journals  of  his  time  ;  his 
attacks  on  Lowell  as  an  abolitionist  and 
Longfellow  as  a  plagiarist  have  been  car 
ried  along  in  the  tedious  momentum  of 
sectional  prejudice,  and  so  given  undue 
prominence ;  but  the  people  must  have 
been  buying  his  magazines  for  the  stories 
he  wrote. 

It  is  strange  that  with  so  many  parlour 
poets  about  him  Poe  should  have  se 
lected  Longfellow,  whom  he  justly  ad 
mired,  for  abuse.  The  u  Longfellow 
War'7  seems  now  a  petty  conflict,  and 
the  echoes  of  it  no  longer  alarm.  "  The 
Village  Blacksmith »  and  "The  Con 
queror  Worm77  subsist  together  in  a 
broad  country.  But,  in  those  queer 
provincial  days,  Poe  and  Longfellow7s 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE          85 

champions  flew  at  each  other  as  if  lit 
erature  had  learned  its  manners  from 
politics.  Longfellow  refused  to  be  led 
into  the  conflict,  and  was  reserved  and 
magnanimous  whenever  the  matter  was 
brought  up.  Poe  was  wrong  in  point  of 
fact  and  wrong  in  the  spirit  which  led 
him  to  assail  the  least  presumptuous,  most 
catholic  and  tolerant  of  the  New  Eng- 
landers.  He  should  have  contented  him 
self  with  his  entertaining  derisions  of 
Transcendentalism. 

By  taking  in  too  many  New  Eng- 
landers, — even  Hawthorne  he  later  de 
preciated, —  he  showed  himself  provin 
cial,  and  just  at  the  time  when  he  should 
have  justified  creative  literature  and 
criticism  he  did  a  foolish  thing. 

In  October,  1845,  he  gave  a  reading 
before  the  Boston  Lyceum.  He  could 
not,  or  did  not,  produce  a  new  poem  for 
the  occasion,  but  delivered  the  juvenile 
"Al  Aaraaf"  and  the  already  familiar 
"Baven."  The  Boston  press  handled 


86  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 
him  severely,  and  Poe  replied  from  New 
York  that  he  had  intended  a  hoax. 
There  was  no  hoax,  and  he  had  intended 
nothing  except  to  read  poetry.  The 
whole  episode  recalls  Holmes7  s  fooling 
in  The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast  Table : 
"  After  a  man  begins  to  attack  the  State 
House,  when  he  gets  bitter  about  the 
Frog  Pond,  you  may  be  sure  there  is  not 
much  left  in  him.  Poor  Edgar  Poe  died 
in  the  hospital  soon  after  he  got  into  this 
way  of  talking  ;  and,  so  sure  as  you  find 
an  unfortunate  fellow  reduced  to  this 
pass,  you  had  better  begin  praying  for 
him  and  stop  lending  him  money,  for 
he  is  on  his  last  legs.  Eemember  poor 
Edgar  !  He  is  dead  and  gone  ,•  but  the 
State  House  has  its  cupola  fresh-gilded, 
and  the  Frog  Pond  has  got  a  fountain 
that  squirts  up  a  hundred  feet  into  the 
air  and  glorifies  that  humble  sheet  with 
a  fine  display  of  provincial  rainbows.77 

Poe  did  not  have  sufficient  capital  or 
enough  business  ability  to  conduct  the 


EDGAE  ALLAtf  POE          87 

Broadway  Journal.  He  left  the  note  for 
fifty  dollars,  by  which  he  bought  out 
Briscoe,  to  be  paid  for  by  the  indorser, 
no  less  likely  a  person  than  Horace 
Greeley,  whose  humorous  record  of  the 
transaction  seems  to  have  caused  um 
brage  among  Poe's  biographers.  Poe 
also  borrowed  from  Griswold  and  tried 
to  borrow  from  his  relatives.  The  Jour 
nal  was  apparently  in  vigorous  condition 
both  as  to  its  literary  content  and  its  ad 
vertising  matter,  but  it  died  gracefully 
the  day  after  Christmas,  1845. 

On  the  last  day  of  the  year  appeared 
Poe's  fourth  volume  of  verse,  The  Eaven 
and  Other  Poems.  This  volume  contains 
the  final  revisions  of  the  fugitive  poems 
which  had  flitted  here  and  there  among 
the  pages  of  the  magazines,  and  to  them 
he  added  only  three  or  four  pieces  in  the 
brief  remaining  years  of  his  life.  He 
entered  the  company  of  the  immortals, 
as  Dickens  said  of  Gray,  with  a  small 
volume  of  verse  under  his  arm.  In 


88          EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

the  patience  and  skill  of  his  revisions  he 
is  like  another  modern  poet,  Tennyson, 
whom  he  called  the  best  of  all  poets,  and 
who  said  of  one  perfect  line  that  it  cost 
him  three  days  and  a  box  of  cigars.  We 
come,  I  think,  to  regard  our  poets  less 
as  mysterious  monks  inspired  by  visions, 
and  more  as  human  beings  sitting  at 
tables  making  good  or  bad  verse.  As 
we  view  them  so,  we  have  greater  re 
spect  for  their  extraordinary  powers.  A 
poet,  specially  endowed  to  take  at  dicta 
tion  the  word  of  heaven,  is  not  interest 
ing  because  he  is  not  responsible.  Poe 
producing  amid  the  known  difficulties 
of  his  life  on  earth  that  volume  of  poems 
is  a  remarkable  human  creature. 

About  this  time  he  was  a  personage  in 
America  and  in  Europe.  By  a  strange 
accident  he  was  introduced  to  France 
amid  the  dust  of  controversy.  Nothing 
in  this  man's  life  ran  smooth  except  his 
poetry  and  prose.  A  French  journal 
published  one  of  his  stories.  Another 


EDGAE  ALLAtf  POE          89 

French  journal  published  the  same  story. 
There  was  a  legal  process  in  which  it 
appears  that  both  journals  were  indebted 
to  Mr.  Poe,  of  America.  This  episode 
(quite  Yankee  in  its  squabble  and  its 
disregard  of  copyright)  drew  attention 
to  Poe.  Some  of  his  other  tales  were 
translated,  he  became  the  life  study  of 
Baudelaire  and  Mallarm6.  Poe7  s  genius 
received  the  additional  polish  of  French 
literary  competence,  and  his  fame  flew 
upon  French  wings.  Edgdr  Poe,  or  Poe, 
belongs  to  unholy  Paris  quite  as  much  as 
to  the  holy  city  of  New  York.  Paris 
was  the  literary  centre  of  the  world.  It 
is  not  quite  determinable  whether  the 
interest  of  Englishmen  in  Poe  is  not  due 
rather  to  Paris  than  to  New  York.  The 
ties  of  blood  and  language  have  been 
broken  on  their  long  course  across  the 
seas  ;  but  London  has,  in  spite  of  insular 
fears  and  memories,  been  vassal  to  Paris 
in  critical  matters  since  the  age  of  Dry- 
den.  Through  France  Edgdr  Poe  be- 


90          EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

came  the  forerunner  of  pre-Baphaelites 
and  decadents  and  other  minor  singers, 
and  so  he  raises  the  question  where  New 
World  barbarism  begins  and  Old  World 
sophistication  leaves  off. 

In  New  York  Poe  was  a  lion  in  liter 
ary  circles,  those  feeble  concourses  of  per 
sons  who  could  not  write.  In  these  meet 
ings  he  comported  himself  with  quiet 
courtesy.  He  was  a  fine  talker,  and  in 
the  drawing-room  a  gallant,  sensible  man. 
He  here  began  some  of  his  many  amours 
with  literary  ladies.  It  was  his  luck  and 
nature  to  leave  behind  him  a  multitude 
of  suspicious  clews  and  circumstances  for 
every  sin  which  he  had  time  and  capac 
ity  to  commit.  It  is  not  necessary  now 
to  throw  up  virtuous  hands  at  the  tender 
exchanges  of  perfervid  rhetoric  between 
the  female  poets  of  America  and  this 
real  poet  of  the  glowing  eyes,  the  soft 
voice,  and  the  winning  manners.  Ap 
parently,  the  only  ladies  who  objected 
to  him  at  the  time  or  after  his  death 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE  91 
were  those  upon  whom  he  did  not  be 
stow  the  flatteries  of  his  social  presence 
and  his  critical  approbation.  His  wife 
was  a  child  broken  by  the  disease  of 
which  she  was  soon  to  die.  He  naturally 
found  intellectual  companionship  with 
other  women 5  and  his  eyes,  his  oratory, 
and  a  touch  of  alcohol  no  doubt  melted 
the  cool  restraints  of  literary  commun 
ion.  The  first  lady  poet  to  whom  he 
proved  irresistible  was  Frances  Sargent 
Osgood,  with  whom  he  exchanged  verses. 
This  relation  roused  the  jealous  virtues 
of  another  poetess,  a  Mrs.  Ellett,  who 
enlisted  the  Transcendental  ethics  of 
Margaret  Fuller.  The  choice  pair  went 
to  Poe's  house  to  intercede  in  behalf 
of  Virginia.  Later,  when  Virginia  was 
dying,  Mrs.  Ellett  thoughtfully  saw  to 
it  that  the  girl  should  hear  all  the  scan 
dal  that  was  fouling  Poe's  name. 

Meanwhile  he  was  making  copy  out 
of  his  New  York  acquaintances,  and 
he  served  them  up  to  the  public  in 


92          EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

a  series  of  articles  called  "The  Lit 
erati.7'  He  spoke  well  of  most  of  them, 
and  by  any  standards  possible  in  writ 
ing  seriously  about  such  a  crew  he 
drew  sharp  plain  lines  between  good  and 
bad  work.  His  worst  attack  was  on 
Thomas -Dunn  English.  This  man  was 
the  author  of  "Ben  Bolt"  (to  which 
Du  Maurier  indiscreetly  gave  renewed 
life  in  Trilby) :  he  later  became  a  mem 
ber  of  Congress.  As  late  as  1895  Thomas 
Dunn  Brown,  as  Poe  called  him,  had 
not  forgiven  Poe  or  his  more  friendly 
biographers.  He  and  Poe  exchanged 
Billingsgate  in  print,  and  Poe  sued  him 
for  slander  and  recovered  damages. 

In  the  spring  of  1846,  while  the  "  Lit 
erati  "  papers  were  stirring  up  a  variety 
of  hard  and  soft  feelings,  the  Poes  moved 
to  Fordham  to  the  cottage  now  pre 
served  in  the  poet's  memory.  He  was 
ill,  and  wrote  little.  In  November  ap 
peared  the  last  of  his  best-known  tales, 
"The  Cask  of  Amontillado."  As  his 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE          93 

work  fell  off  in  quantity,  his  poverty 
grew  worse.  The  condition  of  the  family 
was  discovered  by  one  of  the  literati, 
Mrs.  Gove.  She  sought  help  of  Maria 
Louise  Shew,  and  the  two  friends  caused 
Poe's  needs  to  be  advertised.  Willis 
enlarged  the  theme,  and  a  little  money 
was  raised  for  the  starving  family. 

On  January  29,  1847,  Poe   wrote  to 
Mrs.  Shew  :  — 

"Kindest,  dearest  Friend, — My  poor 
Virginia  still  lives,  although  failing  fast 
and  now  suffering  much  pain.  May  God 
grant  her  life  until  she  sees  you  and 
thanks  you  once  again !  Her  bosom  is  full 
to  overflowing  —  like  my  own  —  with 
a  boundless,  inexpressible  gratitude  to 
you.  Lest  she  may  never  see  you  more, 
she  bids  me  say  that  she  sends  you  her 
sweetest  kiss  of  love  and  will  die  bless 
ing  you.  But  coine  —  oh,  come  to-mor 
row  !  Yes,  I  will  be  calm  —  everything 
you  so  nobly  wish  to  see  me.  My  mother 
sends  you,  also,  her  '  warmest  love  and 
thanks.'  She  begs  me  to  ask  you,  if 
possible,  to  make  arrangements  at  home 


94          EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

so  that  you  may  stay  with  us  to-morrow 
night. » 

The  next  day  Virginia  died.  The 
story  of  their  hardship  is  told  once  for 
all  in  Mrs.  Gove's  account  of  Virginia's 
bed  of  suffering. 

"  There  was  no  clothing  on  the  bed, 
which  was  only  straw,  but  the  snow- 
white  counterpane  and  sheets.  The 
weather  was  cold,  and  the  sick  lady  had 
the  dreadful  chills  that  accompany  the 
hectic  fever  of  consumption.  She  lay  on 
the  straw  bed,  wrapped  in  her  husband's 
great- coat  with  a  large  tortoise-shell  cat 
in  her  bosom.  The  wonderful  cat  seemed 
conscious  of  her  great  usefulness.  The 
coat  and  the  cat  were  the  sufferer's  only 
means  of  warmth,  except  as  her  husband 
held  her  hands  and  her  mother  her 
feet." 

The  only  surviving  letter  which  Poe 
wrote  to  his  wife  is  touching  and  gen 
uine  :  — 


EDGAE  ALLAN  FOB          95 

June  12, 1846. 

"  My  dear  Heart, — my  dear  Virginia,— 
Our  mother  will  explain  to  you  why  I 
stay  away  from  you  this  night.  I  trust 
the  interview  I  am  promised  will  result 
in  some  substantial  good  for  me  —  for  your 
dear  sake  and  hers  —  keep  up  your  heart 
in  all  hopefulness,  and  trust  yet  a  little 
longer.  On  my  last  great  disappoint 
ment  I  should  have  lost  my  courage  but 
for  you,  my  darling  little  wife.  You  are 
my  greatest  and  only  stimulus  now  to 
battle  with  this  uncongenial,  unsatis 
factory  and  ungrateful  life. 

"I  shall  be  with  you  to-morrow  .  .  . 
P.M.,  and  be  assured  that  until  I  see  you 
I  will  keep  in  loving  remembrance  your 
last  words  and  your  fervent  prayer ! 

"  Sleep  well,  and  may  God  grant  you 
a  peaceful  summer  with  your  devoted 
Edgar. » 

After  Virginia's  death  he  was  broken 
and  irresponsible,  and  there  were  only 
two  sane  persons  in  his  acquaintance  to 
steady  and  support  him,  Mrs.  Clemm 
and  Mrs.  Shew.  Mrs.  Shew  had  a  phy 
sician's  education,  and  she  understood 


96  EDGAR  ALLAN  FOB 
Poe's  condition.  She  had  a  physician 
examine  him  as  he  slept,  and  they  knew 
that  the  man  had  not  many  years  to  live. 
In  her  house  Poe  wrote  the  first  draft  oi 
' '  The  Bells. ? '  Unfortunately,  he  lost  her 
more  intimate  help  by  clinging  to  her 
too  closely,  and  she  thought  it  wise  to 
keep  him  at  a  distance.  But  she  re 
mained  his  friend. 

Mrs.  Shew  advised  Poe  to  marry  a 
sensible  woman,  apparently  with  more 
eye  to  his  happiness  than  to  that  of  the 
woman.  Poe  in  his  broken,  overwrought 
condition  made  two  pitiful  attempts  to 
attach  himself  to  women,  but  neither 
woman  was  notable  for  good  sense. 

The  first  was  Mrs.  Whitman,  the 
poetess  of  Providence,  Ehode  Island. 
The  story  is  rather  complex,  and  the 
letters  and  printed  recollections  that  re 
late  and  cross-relate  it  even  scandal  has 
failed  to  vitalise.  The  fantastic  pair 
were  guilty  of  nothing  but  lyric  ecsta 
sies  and  sentimentalities.  It  is  a  pity 


EDGAB  ALLAN  POE  97 
that  this  private  business  was  ever  opened 
ito  the  eye  of  the  world,  which,  in  point 
of  fact,  does  not  love  lovers  in  their 
(crudest  expressions  of  themselves.  Keal 
love  letters  are  usually  poor  literature. 
ilf  they  are  good  literature,  they  are 
poor  love  letters.  Poe  and  Mrs.  Whit 
man  did  not  make  literature  in  their 
prose  correspondence.  The  poems  they 
interchanged  and  her  defence  of  Poe 
published  ten  years  after  his  death  are 
tolerable.  The  rest  might  go  into  the 
fire  along  with  Keats' s  letters  to  Fanny 
Brawne. 

The  story  is,  in  brief,  that  Mrs.  Whit 
man  published  verses  to  Poe.  He  fell 
in  love  with  the  idea  of  her,  and  played 
upon  their  common  poetical  superstition 
by  sending  her  his  verses  "To  Helen, " 
which  by  momentous  coincidence  was 
her  name !  In  the  coincidence  his  pro 
phetic  soul  saw,  according  to  his  own 
queer  statement,  the  workings  of  the 
algebraic  law  of  chance.  In  1848  he 


98  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 
met  her,  and  pressed  Ms  suit.  She  re 
fused  him  on  account  of  her  age  and  ill 
health  and  his  bad  habits.  He  protested 
that  his  habits  had  been  misrepresented, 
promised  to  reform,  tried  to  kill  himsel: 
with  laudanum,  and  finally  persuadec 
her  to  accept  him.  He  went  to  hei 
house  showing  signs  of  having  broker 
his  pledge  of  abstinence,  and  she  dis 
missed  him  with  a  final  confession  thai 
she  loved  him. 

Entangled  with  the  story  of  Mrs.  Whit 
man  is  that  of  his  acquaintance  with 
Mrs.  Annie  Eichmond,  of  Lowell,  tc 
whom  he  wrote  ardent  letters.  The 
reality  of  his  feeling  of  kinship  with 
"  Annie  "  and  his  lack  of  a  sense  of  fit 
ness  are  shown  by  the  fact  that,  when  he 
was  engaged  to  marry  Mrs.  Elmira  Eoy- 
ster  Shelton,  he  wrote  his  mother-in-la^ 
that  they  must  plan  to  be  near  "  Annie, " 
for  he  could  not  live  without  her.  After 
Poe's  death  Mrs.  Clemm  spent  sometime 
with  "  Annie. "  Mrs.  Clemm  must  have 


EDGAE  ALLAtf  FOB          99 

been  bewildered  by  Poe's  shifting  affec 
tions,  but  she  took  several  of  the  ladies 
into  her  confidence,  and  they  wrote  af 
fectionate  letters  to  her  after  Poe  died. 

Mrs.  Boyster,  to  whom  after  so  many 
tender  poetical  bonds  he  prosaically  en 
gaged  himself,  was  the  Elmira  of  his 
boyhood,  now  a  widow  with  a  fortune. 
She  went  into  mourning  after  his  death. 

In  the  last  two  years  of  his  life  Poe 
did  not  produce  enough  manuscript  to 
get  a  living  out  of  the  magazines,  and 
he  was  not  well  or  promptly  paid  for 
what  he  did  send  them.  The  story  of 
Mrs.  Clemm  going  about  among  the  edi 
tors  trying  to  collect  money  for  work 
already  accepted  shows  what  a  preca 
rious  hold  the  great  magazinist  had  upon 
the  institution  for  which  he  had  done  so 
much  and  of  which  he  had  such  high 
hopes. 

During  1847  he  remained  at  Fordham, 
and  he  is  imaged  to  us  as  a  melancholy, 
lonely  man  walking  out  at  night,  brood- 


100        EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

ing  upon  life  and  the  stars.  His  mind 
in  its  lucid  intervals  still  worked  finely, 
and  he  dreamed  a  prose  poem  which 
was  to  explain  the  riddle  of  the  uni 
verse  and  set  him  higher  in  its  unhappy 
daily  destinies.  This  metaphysical  essay, 
"Eureka,"  was  published  in  1848.  It 
is  the  culmination  of  the  half-scientific, 
half- poetic  meditations  which  show  in 
many  of  his  fictions  and  criticisms.  Poe 
had  always  been  an  independent  and 
original  thinker  about  God  and  man. 
He  was  a  combination  of  rationalist  and 
poetic  pagan.  Though  he  was  not  a 
profound  metaphysician,  he  saw  things 
from  his  own  corner  of  mind  in  his  own 
way.  In  a  sense  he  was  uninstructed, 
he  had  not  read  systematically  in  phi 
losophy.  But  a  good  deal  of  the  thought 
of  the  world  is  turned  over  year  by  year 
in  the  magazines  and  current  books,  and 
Poe  read  magazines  and  books  sent  for 
review  as  part  of  his  professional  work. 
Learning  has  been  brought  to  bear  upon 


EDGAE  ALLAtf  POE        101 

Poe's  guess  at  the  great  riddles.  Lit 
erary  persons  have  called  in  their  scien 
tific  and  philosophical  friends  to  help 
them  find  the  flaws  in  a  piece  of  work 
which  was  made  by  a  literary  man  more 
independent  and  confident  than  they. 

To  know  just  where  " Eureka"  be 
longs  in  thought,  one  needs  to  know  not 
what  science  is  now,  but  where  it  was  in 
1848.  Since  Poe's  scientific  argument 
has  been  severely  measured  by  the  stand 
ards  of  science,  as  they  had  developed 
up  to  about  1880,  it  may  be  worth  not 
ing  that  a  recent  scientific  hypothesis, 
that  matter  is  negative  electricity, 
agrees  well  enough  with  Poe's  theory 
that  substance  is  attraction  and  repul 
sion.  The  essay  in  English  which  dis 
cusses  most  competently  the  various  sides 
of  Poe's  mind  is  that  by  the  Scotch 
rationalist,  Mr.  John  M.  Eobertson,  who 
combines  literary  gifts  with  the  peculiar 
knowledge  he  has  amassed  as  historian 
of  certain  phases  of  philosophy.  He  is 


102  EDGAB  ALLAN  POE 
not  so  ready  as  some  of  Poe's  critics  to 
dismiss  u Eureka"  as  a  piece  of  think 
ing.  Poe's  guess  is  as  good  as  many 
which  have  been  seriously  accepted  as 
philosophy.  Solutions  of  the  eternal 
riddles  are  valid  less  for  what  they  offer 
in  explanation  than  for  their  own  per 
fection  of  structure;  and  most  writers  in 
English  upon  philosophical  matters  fall 
far  short  of  Poe  in  clarity  and  beauty  of 
exposition.  The  introduction  is  a  poem 
in  itself:  "To  the  few  who  love  me  and 
whom  I  love,  to  those  who  feel  rather 
than  to  those  who  think,  to  the  dreamers 
and  those  who  put  faith  in  dreams  as 
the  only  realities,  I  offer  this  book  of 
truths,  not  in  its  character  of  truth- 
teller,  but  for  the  beauty  that  abounds 
in  its  truth,  constituting  it  true.  To 
these  I  present  the  composition  as  an 
art-product  alone  —  let  us  say  as  a  ro 
mance  ;  or,  if  I  be  not  urging  too  lofty 
a  claim,  as  a  poem. 

"What    I    here    propound  is    true: 


EDGAB  ALLAN  POE        103 

therefore,  it  cannot  die  5  or,  if  by  any 
means  it  be  now  trodden  down  so  that  it 
die,  it  will  rise  again  to  the  Life  Ever 
lasting.  Nevertheless,  it  is  as  a  poem 
only  that  I  wish  this  work  to  be  judged 
after  I  am  dead." 

Obviously,  an  easy  request  to  grant. 
It  is  pathetic,  though,  to  learn  what  con 
fidence  Poe  had  in  his  theory  of  cos 
mogony.  He  believed  that  it  would  rev 
olutionise  thought  and  give  him  new 
prosperity,  and  that  Putnam  should  pub 
lish  fifty  thousand  copies.  Putnam  con 
tented  himself  with  five  hundred  copies, 
and  the  world  refused  to  be  revolution 
ised  or  even  to  give  Poe  prosperity. 

During  the  last  years  of  his  life  Poe 
lectured  in  several  cities  on  poetry  and 
on  the  universe,  and  with  the  proceeds 
of  the  lectures  and  what  money  he  could 
borrow  from  his  friends,  whose  help  he 
now  vigorously  solicited,  he  again  hoped 
to  give  shape  to  his  nebulous  magazine. 
Before  his  death  he  found  a  promising 


104  EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 
partner  in  a  Mr.  Patterson,  of  Oquawka, 
Illinois.  They  arranged  to  publish  the 
first  number  in  July,  1850.  The  great 
magazine  seemed  ready  to  emerge  at  last 
from  shadow  when  the  darker  shadow 
intervened. 

Poe  was  a  poet  to  the  end.  In  "Ula- 
lume"  of  1847  he  shows  his  peculiar 
characteristics  in  their  extremest  form. 
It  is  hard  to  feel  sure  from  one  day's 
reading  of  it  to  another  whether  he  has 
here  crossed  the  line  into  nonsense  or 
whether  he  has  come  to  ultimate  per 
fection.  To  the  final  year  belong  the 
third  version  of  "The  Bells, "  "Annabel 
Lee,"  and  "For  Annie." 

In  this  memorable  poem  "For  Annie," 
Poe  seems  to  speak  out  of  the  real  ter 
rors  of  his  life. 

"  And  the  fever  called  Living 
Is  conquered  at  last." 

Haply,  it  was  conquered  by  the  death 
that  came  soon  after,  m-luck  pursued 


EDGAE  ALLAN  POE        105 

him  to  the  end.  The  financial  panic  sent 
into  insolvency  some  of  the  magazines 
which  owed  him  money  or  had  accepted 
manuscripts  or  promised  to  accept  them. 
The  only  bright  spot  was  his  success  in 
Eichmond,  where  society  seems  to  have 
done  him  honour  and  put  money  in  his 
purse.  He  paid  two  visits  to  Eichmond. 
For  the  second  he  left  New  York  in 
June,  1849.  Before  he  went,  he  seems  to 
have  known  that  his  life  hung  by  slender 
strands,  for  he  directed  Mrs.  Lewis 
(" Stella,'7  another  of  his  lady  poets)  to 
write  his  life,  and  he  wrote  to  Griswold, 
asking  him  to  undertake  the  editing  of 
his  works.  Gris wold's  reply  came  while 
he  was  in  Eichmond,  and  the  pleasure  it 
gave  Poe,  as  witnessed  by  one  of  his 
friends,  indicates  that  the  man  who 
wrote  it  should  not  have  written  after 
Poe's  death  that  he  was  not  Poe's  friend. 
On  his  way  to  Eichmond  through 
Philadelphia,  Poe  was  enforced  guest  in 
the  house  of  John  Sartain,  the  publisher 


106        EDGAE  ALLAN  POE 

of  the  magazine  in  which  "The  Bells'7 
appeared.  Poe  was  ill  and  crazed,  pos 
sessed  with  the  hallucination  that  his 
enemies  were  pursuing  him.  His  jour 
ney  to  Eichmond  was  delayed  many 
days,  during  which  Mrs.  Clemm,  in 
New  York,  was  frantic  with  anxiety. 
Poe  explained  to  the  Oquawka  partner 
that  he  had  had  cholera.  Cholera  was 
not  the  name  of  the  disease. 

From  Eichmond  he  wrote  hopefully 
to  Mrs.  Clemm  ;  he  engaged  himself  to 
marry  Mrs.  Shelton ;  and  he  left  with 
many  Eichmond  people  the  memory  of 
a  sad,  sober  man.  Among  these  was 
Mrs.  Susan  Archer  Weiss,  who  later 
wrote  a  pleasant  account  of  him.  The 
other  side  of  his  life  in  Eichmond  is 
given  by  J.  E.  Thompson,  the  editor  of 
the  Messenger,  in  whom  Poe  found  a 
good  friend.  Thompson  says  that  in  the 
earlier  visit  of  Poe  to  Eichmond,  in  1848, 
he  had  been  found  befuddled  and  ragged 
in  the  lowest  haunts  of  the  city,  and  that 


EDGAB  ALLAN  POE  107 
"his  entire  residence  in  Bichmond  of 
late  was  but  a  succession  of  disgraceful 
follies. "  Yet  Poe  left  Bichmond  this 
second  time,  full  of  hope,  with  money 
he  had  received  from  Thompson  in  ad 
vance  for  an  article,  and  perhaps  with 
money  from  his  lectures  and  from  friends 
who  were  helping  him  with  his  magazine 
project. 

He  took  steamer  from  Bichmond  the 
last  of  September.  The  possibility  that 
he  had  money  may  account  for  the  dis 
aster  in  Baltimore.  On  October  3  he  was 
found  in  one  of  the  ward  polls  by  a 
printer,  who  wrote  to  Dr.  J.  E.  Snod- 
grass  that  Poe  was  "  the  worse  for  wear  " 
and  "in  need  of  immediate  assistance. '? 
He  may  have  been  robbed — all  trace  of 
his  baggage  had  been  lost — or  he  may 
have  come  to  the  end  of  his  strength  or 
suffered  from  exposure  after  drinking. 
It  may  be  that  he  was  victim  of  the  po 
litical  habit  of  the  time  to  "coop" 
strangers  on  the  eve  of  election,  drug 


108        EDGAE  ALLAK  POE 

them,  and  then  send  them  obediently 
dazed  to  the  polls  to  vote.  If  he  was 
thus  treated,  his  captors  had  tampered 
with  a  delicate  subject,  a  body  at  the 
end  of  its  slender  power  to  resist  drugs. 
He  was  taken  to  the  Washington  Hospital 
in  Baltimore,  and  died  there  early  Sun 
day  morning,  the  7th  of  October,  1849. 

One  hears  again  the  voice  of  Carlyle 
as  he  looked  at  De  Quincey,  that  other 
drug-shadowed  waif  of  the  magazines : 
"Eccovi,  this  child  has  been  in  hell  1 " 


BIBLIOGEAPHY 

Biographies,  criticisms,  and  other 
printed  sources  of  information  and  mis 
information  about  Poe  form  a  consider 
able  library.  The  following  list  in 
cludes  some  important  books  to  which 
the  reader  may  care  to  turn  for  detailed 
accounts  of  Poe's  life  or  for  illuminating 
literary  criticism  :  — 

I.  MEMOIR.    By  Eufus  Wilmot  Gris- 
wold    (New     York,    1858:    Eedfield). 
Originally  prefixed  to  the  third  volume 
of  the  first  collected  edition  of  Poe's 
works  (1850).     Since  suppressed,  but  to 
be  found  in  public  libraries.    Under  cor 
rection  of  other  works  it  affords  evi 
dence  which  cannot  be  disregarded. 

II.  PASSAGES  FROM  THE  CORRESPOND 
ENCE  AND  OTHER  PAPERS  OF  EUFUS 
W.  GRISWOLD  (Cambridge,  Mass.,  1898  : 
William  M.  Griswold).     Contains  many 
complete  letters  and  documents  relating 


110  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

to  Poe.  The  editor's  comments  are  the 
son's  justification  of  the  father.  The 
manuscripts  of  many  Griswold  papers 
are  in  the  possession  of  the  Boston  Pub 
lic  Library. 

HI.  MEMOIR.  By  E.  L.  Didier.  Pre 
fixed  to  an  edition  of  Poe's  poems  (New 
York,  1877  :  Widdleton). 

IY.  LIFE.  By  William  F.  Gill  (New 
York,  1877  :  Dillingham).  The  first  ex 
tended  account  of  Poe  in  counterblast  of 
Griswold. 

V.  MEMOIR.    By  E.  H.  Stoddard.   Pre 
fixed  to  Select  Works  of  Poe  (New  York, 
1880  :  Widdleton).    Now  to  be  found  in 
the  edition  of  1884  published  by  A.  C. 
Armstrong  &  Son.     This  memoir  is  an 
nounced  by  the  author,  who  knew  Poe 
and  his  times,  as  the  first  dispassionate 
account. 

VI.  LIFE,  LETTERS  AND  OPINIONS  OF 

ALLAN  POE.    By  John  H.  In- 


BIBLIOGEAPHY  111 

gram  (London,  1880  :  J.  Hogg).  A  care 
ful  rehabilitation  of  Poe's  character, 
based  on  painstaking  stndy  of  original 
sources.  Pleasantly  biassed  in  Poe's 
favour,  and  illustrative  of  British  solici 
tude  for  Poe's  good  name  and  works. 

VII.  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE.    By  George 
E.  Woodberry.     American  Men  of  Letters 
Series  (Boston,    1884:    Houghton,    Mif- 
flin  &  Co.).     The  best  compact  life  of 
Poe  in  point  of  good  sense,  readability, 
and  critical  competence. 

VIII.  LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  POE.    By 
James  A.  Harrison,  of  the  University  of 
Virginia  (New  York,  1904  :  Crowell  & 
Co.).    The  most  complete  available  col 
lection    of    documents  and  reprints  of 
important    opinions   and   reminiscence. 
Pleasantly  biassed  in  Poe's  favour,  and 
illustrative  of  Virginian  solicitude  for 
Poe's  good  name  and  works. 

IX.  EDGAR   POE:    SA    VIE   ET   SON 
(EuvRE.     By  I^mile  Louvriere    (Paris, 


112  BIBLIOGEAPHY 

1904  :  Alcan).     An  interesting  example 

of  French  psycho-pathological  criticism. 

X.  For  critical  essays  of  value  see 
jficrivains  Francises,  by  fimile  Henne- 
quin  5  Essays  toward  a  Critical  Method, 
by  John  M.  Bobertson  ;  an  Introduction 
to  the  poetical  works  of  Poe,  by  James 
Hannay ;  Poe  Ideologue,  by  Camille 
Mauclair;  Les  Nevroses,  by  Mme. 
Charles  Yincens  (Arvede  Barine)  ;  essay 
by  Andrew  Lang  introductory  to  edi 
tion  of  Poe's  Poems  published  by  Kegan 
Paul,  Trench  &  Co.  in  1883. 


THE  BEACON  BIOGRAPHIES. 

M.  A.  DEWOLFE  HOWE,  Editor. 


The  aim  of  this  series  is  to  furnish  brief,  read 
able,  and  authentic  accounts  of  the  lives  of  those 
Americans  whose  personalities  have  impressed 
themselves  most  deeply  on  the  character  and 
history  of  their  country.  On  account  of  the 
length  of  the  more  formal  lives,  often  running 
into  large  volumes,  the  average  busy  man  and 
woman  have  not  the  time  or  hardly  the  inclina 
tion  to  acquaint  themselves  with  American  bi 
ography.  In  the  present  series  everything  that 
such  a  reader  would  ordinarily  care  to  know  is 
given  by  writers  of  special  competence,  who 
possess  in  full  measure  the  best  contemporary 
point  of  view.  Each  volume  is  equipped  with 
a  frontispiece  portrait,  a  calendar  of  important 
dates,  and  a  brief  bibliography  for  further  read 
ing.  Finally,  the  volumes  are  printed  in  a  form 
convenient  for  reading  and  for  carrying  handily 
in  the  pocket. 

SMALL,  MAYNARD  &  COMPANY,  Publisheri. 


THE  BEACON  BIOGRAPHIES. 

The  following  volumes  are  issued:  — 

Louis  Agassiz,  by  ALICE  BACHE  GOULD. 

John  James  Audubon,  by  JOHN  BURROUGHS. 

Edwin  Booth,  by  CHARLES  TOWNSEND  COPELAND. 

Phillips  Brooks,  by  M.  A.  DE\VOLFE  HOWE. 

John  Brown,  by  JOSEPH  EDGAR  CHAMBERLIN. 

Aaron  Burr,  by  HENRY  CHILDS  MERWIN. 

James  Fenimore  Cooper,  by  W.  B.  SHUBRICK  CLYMER. 

Stephen  Decatur,  by  CYRUS  TOWNSEND  BRADY. 

Frederick  Douglass,  by  CHARLES  W.  CHESNUTT. 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  by  FRANK  B.  SANBORN. 

David  G.  Farragut,  by  JAMES  BARNES. 

John  Fiske,  by  THOMAS  SERGEANT  PERRY. 

Ulysses  S.  Grant,  by  OWEN  WISTER. 

Alexander  Hamilton,  by  JAMES  SCHOULER. 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  by  Mrs.  JAMES  T.  FIELDS. 

Father  Hecker,  by  HENRY  D.  SEDGWICK,  Jr. 

Sam  Houston,  by  SARAH  BARNWELL  ELLIOTT. 

"  Stonewall "  Jackson,  by  CARL  HOVEY. 

Thomas  Jefferson,  by  THOMAS  E.  WATSON. 

Robert  E.  Lee,  by  WILLIAM  P.  TRENT. 

Henry  W.  Longfellow,  by  GEORGE  RICE  CARPENTER. 

James  Russell  Lowell,  by  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE,  Jr. 

Samuel  F.  B.  Morse,  by  JOHN  TROWBRIDGE. 

Thomas  Paine,  by  ELLERY  SEDGWICK. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe,  by  JOHN  ALBERT  MACY. 

Daniel  Webster,  by  NORMAN  HAPGOOD. 

Walt  Whitman,  by  ISAAC  HULL  PLATT. 

John  Greenleaf  Whittier,  by  RICHARD  BURTON. 


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APR     5   1934 

APR    6  1934 

HPT     4  :''r-'    f 

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